After 12 years of helping Tauranga's foodies serve up great meals, the iconic Tauranga gourmet food specialist Bel Mondo is returning to its roots as a food service industry supplier.

Owners Grant and Claudia Lues, who took over from founder Rocco Fanfulla two years ago, are sad to be saying goodbye to their many retail customers. They will close the store's doors to the public when all current stock is sold.

Bel Mondo owners Grant and Claudia Lues are closing the gourmet shop to focus on supplying restaurants.

'It's been great getting to know our wonderful loyal customers and that's going to be the hardest thing,” says Grant.

He stresses the company has done well and has not gone into liquidation, but the trend for supermarkets to carry more gourmet food lines, along with increased competition from larger specialty food stores, has prompted them to re-focus the business.

The St John Street premises will soon be exclusively used as a base for their food service distribution operation, which they already run as European Foods Bay of Plenty. The product range includes authentic imported speciality meats such as Parma Ham, cheeses such as Parmesan and peccorino, Lavazza coffee, vinegars, oils, pastas and 'amazing” blast-frozen specialty desserts previously unavailable outside Italy.

'We have been distributing Bel Mondo's products into restaurants for a long time now, so our new venture will be building on that base,” says Grant.

'However, as direct importers, we will be marketing a slightly reduced range of products at far better prices.”

All Bel Mondo products are on sale at discounts of 30-50 per cent to make space for European Foods stock. Trade enquiries are welcome, phone 07 579 0939.