Hi & Bye is more than a convenience store, it’s a neighborhood store. If you’ve resided in Huntsville’s Five Points neighborhood at some point the last few decades or spent much time there, you’re familiar with this gray wedge-shaped building at the corner of O’Shaughnessy Avenue and Windham Street.

Unlike a typical convenience store, the Hi & Bye isn’t located on a commercial thoroughfare. It’s right in the middle of a residential area, surrounded by humble-to-covetable vintage homes and apartments. Another differential: Unlike most convenience stores, Hi & Bye doesn’t sell gasoline.

Five Points is just east of Huntsville’s revitalized downtown and toney Old Towne historic district. The neighborhood’s home to an endearing quilt of folks. Blue collar. White collar. Old hippies. Young hipsters. Natives. Transplants. Moneyed. Broke.

The Hi & Bye at 127 O’Shaughnessy is officially Hi & Bye 2, a name that sounds like the title to a comedy movie sequel but actually means it was originally affiliated with the other Hi & Bye, the one on Clinton Avenue. Mohammad “Moe” Qutesh has owned the Hi & Bye on O’Shaughnessy since December 2004. Good natured and wiry framed, Qutesh is behind the counter most hours his store’s open.

There’s a solid selection of beer, wine, cigarettes, snack chips, sodas and candy here. The perennial convenience top-sellers. But Qutesh’s shelves are also stocked with everything from olive oil and pasta to detergent and feminine products to charcoal and motor oil. As Qutesh beautifully puts it, “We have that thing you forgot to get at Walmart.”

Last fall, Hi & Bye added a small deli sandwich section to the store. Tucked into a corner to the right of the counter where customers check out, there’s a silver prep table, commercial slicer, toaster and panini press. It’s not uncommon for a convenience store to offer prepared sandwiches of various vintages and originations. But made-to-order sandwiches, like Hi & Bye does, not so much.

They haven’t started a sandwich revolution here, but they make solid old-school deli fare. A luscious, melty, striated Rueben. A succulent “turkey special” hot sandwich with bird, bacon, Swiss cheese and your choice of fixings — tomato, onion, mayo, different mustards, etc. They sell a lot of BLTs.

The menu also gets into wraps, hot dogs, and classic deli sandwiches built with roast beef, pastrami, ham and so on. And the convenience of having this in your neighborhood – my neighborhood — is pretty rad. All other values being equal in the equation, a sandwich tastes better when it’s made by someone besides you.

Hi & Bye calls their deli the Lil’ SamWitch Shop. It’s the brainchild of longtime employee and manager Christy Coshatt. Whenever Qutesh would take time off and Coshatt was running Hi & Bye, she’d ask customers if there was something they thought the store should add. She kept hearing back “food” over and over.

“It only took me 15 years to talk Moe into it,” Coshatt jokes. During our recent chat, she’s wearing a gray T-shirt emblazoned with the word “Nope,” which fits her no-nonsense personality.

Turns out, there was already a slicer in Hi & Bye’s back storage area. Coshatt purchased a deli prep station online and Qutesh lineup up purveyors for the proteins, produce, etc.

Now, they needed someone to run the thing. Krystal Lanier, who like Qutesh and Coshatt resides in the neighborhood, was a regular customer at Hi & Bye. A restaurant biz veteran, including stints with Italian, steakhouse and Asian joints, Lanier was the perfect fit. “She can sling a sandwich like nobody’s business,” Coshatt says.

Lanier says she got into the service industry because, “I’m a people person, I guess. I hate office work too.” Asked for the key to a better-than-OK deli sandwich, Lanier says, “fresh ingredients.”

They brought in another local, Jessica Bailey, to help with the deli some too. Bailey also posts their daily specials and menu item pics on Hi & Bye 2′s social media.

Currently, Lil’ SamWitch Shop sells around 20 make-to-orders a day. Coshatt would love to double that average. Each shift, they also prep a few sandwiches and hot dogs to package for the store’s cooler for hours after the deli closes, but the store stays open.

As anyone who’s run one knows, small business is a wild animal and moving target. When a Dollar General discount store opened on Five Points perimeter a while back, it significantly cut into Hi & Bye’s business. More recently, increasing fees for accepting credit/debit card payments by customers also chomped into the bottom line. The deli side hustle is a way to differentiate and augment.

When he’s not behind the counter at his store, Qutesh likes to play basketball or hike. The Hi & Bye building dates back to the 1950s, when it was part of the now-defunct Big Brothers local grocery business, he says. On the store’s east side exterior, a since added painting of a backward-facing, barefooted cartoon figure has become neighborhood iconography.

Before moving to Huntsville, Qutesh resided in Miami where he worked as a computer programmer for a bank. A Huntsville friend who owned the Clinton location of Hi & Bye needed backup, so Qutesh came to help out with the Five Points location. Around that same time, Qutesh got laid off from his Miami bank computer job.

Originally, Qutesh planned to be in Huntsville for just six months. He ended up purchasing High & Bye 2, and his friend, the original Hi & Bye owner, relocated to California, he says. Almost 20 years later, it’s hard to imagine Five Points without Qutesh, his easy smile and his funky little store.

Hi & Bye 2 hours and more info at facebook.com/hiddengemfivepoints. Lil’ SamWitch Shop’s hours are 10 a.m. – 6 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. Saturday.

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