Ashford Cleaners

When Peter Accardi and his brothers were teens, they used to make deliveries for his father’s Danforth dry cleaning store all the time. Now that he and his older brother Lou run Ashford Cleaners in Forest Hill, not that much has changed.

“My dad was in business with my uncle and mom, and after that location was dissolved, my brother, parents and I scouted Toronto for a new spot,” Peter recalls. “We’d pick a corner and just sit and watch the traffic going by.”

In 1988, they settled on a rental space near Eglinton Avenue and Avenue Road, just because they felt a connection there. For a decade, the brothers built the clientele for Ashford Cleaners. Then, when an opportunity to buy their own building just three blocks west came up, they jumped at the chance.