At Safeway, the clerks take your Club Card, fracture the pronunciation of your surname, then ask if you’d like help carrying your box of Kleenex to the car. It’s a forced and artificial attempt at customer service. Despite the cashiers’ noble efforts, it falls flatter than the pita bread in your basket.

The deep thinkers at Safeway, and within head offices across North America, could learn crucial lessons about REAL customer service by standing at the elbow of Azim Nurmohamed each morning.

Azim is the manager-cum-front man for one of the jumpin’est small businesses in Calgary, the Timothy’s World Coffee outlet on the Plus-15 level of Bankers Hall. Starting at 5:30 a.m., Azim sells gallons and gallons of coffee to a doting mob of regular customers. They’d rather skip their pre-dawn shower than miss their wake-up call with the effervescent Azim.

“Oh, it’s a show, it really is quite a show. He gets everybody hyped up, ” cackled Azim’s boss (and relative by marriage), Zul Ebrahim. Zul owns the Bankers Hall Timothy’s franchise, as well as two others, and his assessment is bang on.

The long line forms on Azim’s left – hundreds of downtown office workers spilling into the Plus-15 which connects Bankers Hall with TD Square, parading past nine urns of enticing and exotic blends.

Clearly, the high-traffic location is a gold mine. But Zul affords equal credit to his priceless staff.

Everything starts with Azim. He could give memory lessons to elephants.

“You take a medium, don’t you Cindy Jo?” Azim chirped Friday morning, filling cups in a blur of motion.

In rapid succession, Azim jerked two thumbs up at a longtime regular.

He tossed off incessant gags and one-liners. He razzed the clients he knows he can kid, and coddled more sensitive souls.

Each and every person, so it seemed, was welcomed and thanked by name. Azim pours for premiers past and present. He serves the mayor, Bankers Hall CEOs, and Stephen Avenue panhandlers precisely the same way.

Regardless of the cut of their clothes, each is greeted with the same warmth, the same otherworldly name recognition.

“Oh, Jennifer, I made your mochachino, you betcha . . . Lisa, your cinnamon’s ready . . . bless your heart, Reuben . . . Chris, what’re you having? German chocolate? Have a great day, Myron, OK? You betcha.”

Seven days a week, Zul, Azim, and/or seven other employees of Timothy’s World Coffees prove the worth of a formula which should be recited as daily gospel by every small business in the country.

Location, location, location. Service, service, service. Forget Einstein and E=MC2. Instead, multiply location times service, and take ’em to the ninth power. Recently re-opened and redecorated in Timothy’s colours, Zul Ebrahim’s little beehive of caffeine and comedy does an astonishing volume of trade.

Franchises aren’t everyone’s cup of mocha. Hours are long, the work is non-stop, and startup costs can be daunting. A Timothy’s can cost from $250,000-$300,000 in equipment and franchise fees.

But when business is good, it’s great. Zul’s tiny store was originally christened Grabbajabba, part of a 56-store chain purchased for $1.35 million from Calgary’s Comac Food Group Inc. by Timothy’s.

Zul’s Bankers Hall franchise led all Canadian Grabbajabbas in sales for five years running.

Though he’s an accommodating guy, Zul begged off discussing sales numbers, because Timothy’s brass prefers not to share classified data.

But you’d be in the neighbourhood if you guess-timated his annual sales to be in the moderate-to-high six figures.

Overhead’s not cheap, of course. Zul’s landlords are as shy as Timothy’s about revealing financial info, but a Bankers Hall source suggested the shop’s monthly rent would come in below five figures — but not much below.

“I believe in customer service, no matter what. Customers pay my rent, pay my expenses,” Zul recited his mantra.

“People don’t mind spending money. But they need attention, and service. In the last 10 years, I don’t think I’ve seen one customer go away mad — they walk away with a smile,” he grinned.

The reason is no secret. It’s Azim. New staff learn from his example. “Call them by their first name, they’ll never forget you,” Zul admonished.

Zul, Azim, and Co. proved it while the shop was closed six weeks for renovations. They were able to run only one small cart outside, but the lineups stretched almost to Gulf Canada Square.

“Unbelievable. But it wasn’t just the coffee they were waiting for,” said Zul.

Nope, they were waiting for a grin from Zul’s not-so-secret weapon.

That’s Azim, the customer-service king. You betcha.