BUSINESS SPOTLIGHT:No herky-jerky success story here

Before he was even 10 years old, , RJ McNerney can recall standing on an old Coca Cola box, cutting pieces of meat in his mother and father’s market in San Clemente.

It was the beginning of his long career in the meat and grocery business, which has culminated in his current venture: Promelis Westcliff Market in Newport Beach.

But Promelis is not just any ordinary market, and it’s far from the big-brand supermarkets.

In the store, employees make fresh beef and turkey jerky, something that is not as simple for a business as it sounds. To do that the facility needs to be a state-inspected, meat-processing facility. He’s also under the scrutiny of the United States Department of Agriculture when processing meat, which he said results in the “finest beef jerky anywhere in the world.”

“We’ll challenge any place that makes beef jerky to a blind-taste test,” McNerney said. “It’s very labor intensive and we don’t make anymore money off it; we just sell it for a reasonable price.”

But although McNerney may be a meat expert, his market boasts a range of other products from specialty sauces and fresh produce to hot and cold deli cases, which can attract huge crowds during the lunch hour, McNerney said.

Newport Beach resident Joyce Lachenmyer has been shopping at Promelis for about a year and said she only goes to the major supermarkets for canned goods and other similar items.

“Their deli is wonderful, the produce is fresh and the racks are clean — that’s really important,” Lachenmyer said Friday as she shopped, adding that the deli’s turkey is “wonderful.”

Owning the store and mingling with customers has become a passion for McNerney, who said seeing his grandchildren run around the store is always fun. But his passions don’t end there. McNerney is a fisherman and he’s found a way to blend his business with pleasure, much to the delight of his customers.

McNerney is a licensed commercial fisherman and, during the right seasons, will take his boat out with some of his employees, who also have commercial fishing licenses, and they’ll fish a couple times a week.

“I love fishing, and this gives me a good excuse to do it,” McNerney said.

Sometimes they’ll drive the boat all night to find the right spot, casting their lines at dawn and hauling in their catch that evening.

“Before we even have the fish off the boat, people at the store are telling customers they’ll have fresh dorado in the store,” McNerney said.

All fun aside, McNerney runs a tight ship, which could be a reason for his continued success, even if it didn’t come overnight — for the first three and a half years, the market lost money, but has since rebounded.

He showered praise on his employees, calling them the heart of the operation and General Manager Mike Matthews his “right hand man,” but he also makes sure they’re always working as long as they’re on the clock.

“Having people in here always doing something is the key,” McNerney said. “It’s really the little things” that makes a business successful.

And although he said he only makes about 7 cents to the dollar, the store is doing enough business now that he’s able to pay the salaries of all 30 of his employees and pay his roughly $1 million in annual bills with relative ease.