The MegaMart Wholesale Club celebrated its 10-year anniversary with dinner and an awards ceremony at the Hilton Kingston on Tuesday evening.

The wholesale club — which started in 2000 with Portmore and has since added branches in Kingston and Montego Bay — honoured 43 persons for 10 years of service. MegaMart owner and founder Gassan Azan Jr, his mother Dawn Azan and several other staff members were also presented with special awards.

Azan Jr praised his team for building an incomparable brand, “going above and beyond to ensure that service of a high quality always comes first” and contributing to the maintenance of a first-world shopping experience.

Master of ceremony Delrose Malcolm, MegaMart administrative and promotions manager, expressed how fortunate the company was to be helmed by “a man with such vision”. His mother Dawn also received commendations for her generosity, personable nature and inspiring energy.

Dinner served, newscaster-turned-crooner, Ian Andrews, entertained guests with a cabaret-esque set that included a powerful rendition of Strawberries and several local favourites (think impersonations of Edi Fitzroy and Gregory Isaacs et al). Showing his vocal prowess, Andrews worked the floor, all the while handing out strawberries and flowers to swooning women. There was, too, an entertaining exchange involving Minister of Information Daryl Vaz and his wife Ann-Marie who both had the house erupting in laughter at their attempts to sing.

Not to be outdone, Desi Jones and Friends provided easy soundtracks like Stevie Wonder’s Sir Duke among others throughout the night. But perhaps the night’s most entertaining set came by way of crooner AJ Brown, who was excellent on a cover of Otis Redding’s Sitting At The Dock Of The Bay, When You Love and the operatic You Raised Me Up.

The evening’s guest speaker Digicel CEO Mark Linehan congratulated MegaMart on achieving 10 years and urged the organisation to continue putting the customer first.

“We at Digicel are not concerned with the competition… our focus is and will always be our customers if we are to maintain market share,” Linehan said.

The evening, which rounded out at about 11:00 pm, was punctuated with inside jokes as emcee Malcolm interjected all-too funny anecdotes about some of the awardees.