Natalie McCambridge jokes that, despite being general manager of her family’s iconic food hall and restaurant, she is not allowed to waitress.

“They don’t want me serving tables up here because I talk too much,” she laughs, as she directs Irish Country Living to the “best seat in Galway”, by a sash window overlooking Shop St, where McCambridge’s straddles numbers 38 to 39.

But as she passes us a menu (“Ciara makes a mean carrot cake!”) and orders us a second coffee having noticed the first one has cooled slightly since we’ve started chatting, it’s clear that hospitality is simply in her veins.

“I like to look after people,” she smiles – though that should come as no surprise seeing as her family has been serving the City of the Tribes for almost 100 years.

One of the flagship family-owned shops still in Galway city, McCambridge’s was originally established in 1925 by Natalie’s grandfather George and his brother Malachy, who came from Northern Ireland. While Malachy later moved on to Dublin and set up the company behind McCambridge’s bread, George ran the shop as a traditional pub and grocery, with customers coming from as far as the Aran Islands to stock up on supplies.

But it was Natalie’s father Pat, who entered the family business at 15, who really laid the foundations for McCambridge’s as it is today – becoming the first wine importer in the west of Ireland, for example, or stocking products like Brie from France or coffee beans from Costa Rica.

“You couldn’t get those anywhere else, so he was very forward-thinking,” says Natalie, who adds that even at 83 years of age, her father still comes in to the shop five days a week.

“This year was his 67th year working at McCambridge’s at Christmas.”

It was also Pat who started farming in Furbo, towards Spiddal, after marrying wife Ursula, who he met when she worked in the bank next door to the store.

“Shop St romance,” smiles Natalie, whose earliest memories include topping scallions and picking the famous McCambridge strawberries (“backbreaking”) from the farm for the shop, playing with the till, legs swinging from the countertop, and coming in every St Patrick’s Day with her siblings to select their Easter eggs.

“The shop is part of who I am,” she says, though admits that in her late teens and 20s, she “wanted to get as far away as possible”, travelling through Australia and working in the arts with Druid Theatre and Ros na Rún amongst others.

“I didn’t really see it in my future,” continues Natalie, but after the arrival of her son Marcus, now 17, she felt herself “more drawn to it”, joining her brother Eoin, who is managing director, her sister Norma, who is a director and oversees their hamper business, and her sister Trish, who is a horticulturist and has taken over the polytunnels on the farm.

Over the years, however, the arrival of supermarkets, plus the pedestrianisation of Shop St, meant that McCambridge’s was no longer the go-to place for the “big shop”.

“People just didn’t want to be in the town and we kind of lost our way for a little bit,” says Natalie, who explains that to reinvent themselves, they decided to refocus on the higher end of the market, with a big emphasis on Irish producers.

“‘We’re a high street shop, let’s not stock the baked beans anymore,’” she recalls of their decision to redesign their food hall.

“It was the best decision we ever made.”

And Natalie is keen to communicate their “real food” philosophy.

“I always say: ‘What do people not realise about McCambridge’s?’” she says. “In our deli bar downstairs, every morning we cook Irish chickens and we chop them and that’s 100% Irish chicken – nothing processed, it’s real chicken – and sometimes I think people don’t realise that.

“Our hams that we’re doing the same way for over 50 years, we get in full hams and we de-bone them and we cook them overnight in a big old boiler, then we bake them and they’re sliced here on the counter and that’s what’s in our sandwiches and in our deli bar.”

But as well as the obvious draw of the food (a McCambridge’s sandwich is known to have sustained many the hungry student), a big part of the shop’s appeal is as a meeting point, which the family realised after they put in a coffee bar downstairs during the refit.

“It was quite French almost and I remember thinking: ‘God, people want to eat here, they want to come to McCambridge’s,’” says Natalie of their decision to then turn the former store room upstairs into a café and restaurant in 2012.

“Opening this was like coming full circle,” she continues, likening it to the early days when the pub and grocery was a hub for people from all over Galway, “but that’s what I love – it’s now a place where people come to meet.”

Surviving as an independent family business, however, is not without its challenges; not least the crippling cost of insurance, with their premium rising from €17,000 per year to €102,000 in the last six years.

“That’s the reality and that I worry about, and not just for us but for lots of other small independent businesses,” says Natalie. “It’s something that is a huge threat to Irish towns.”

Staff costs are also high. There are about 65 people employed year-round, rising to 80 in the summer season and up to 100 at Christmas, but for Natalie, it’s essential to keeping a high level of service.

“Sometimes I wonder if someone came in and said: ‘You could save this much by doing it this way, but they might go’; ‘You can’t do your chickens like that’; Or ‘you can’t have someone spending 15 minutes talking to someone about a bottle of wine’. And I don’t want to cut that,” she says, adding that she has noticed how many elderly people living alone call in, not just for their “one slice of ham, their little bit of salad”, but for company and conversation. And as the McCambridge family look towards their 100th anniversary, Natalie hopes that the shop will continue to be a part of people’s lives – and of Galway – for as many years to come.

“I would hate to think that we wouldn’t be here on Shop St,” she concludes. “I really hope that we can keep it going.” CL

McCambridge’s of Galway, 38-39 Shop St, Galway. www.mccambridges.com