San­dra Chouthi

Be­fore the crack of dawn, at least 25 bright­ly-paint­ed de­liv­ery trucks leave the com­pound of Hol­i­day Snacks' com­pound at Char­lieville, Uri­ah But­ler High­way. Their de­liv­ery­men's cus­tomers on any giv­en day are the 10,000 whole­sale and re­tail out­lets lo­cat­ed through­out Trinidad, from the road­side par­lour in Ica­cos to the su­per­mar­ket chain in St Ann's. "There's not a road in Trinidad that we prob­a­bly don't pass," said gen­er­al man­ag­er Ian Cur­rie. The trucks they are dri­ving be­long to Hol­i­day Snacks Ltd, which ob­served its 20th an­niver­sary on April 1, 2009.

Its cel­e­bra­tion of the oc­ca­sion was a long ser­vice awards cer­e­mo­ny com­plete with big screen tele­vi­sions and red car­pet. About 130 em­ploy­ees got long ser­vice awards on that red car­pet night in May.

The Char­lieville op­er­a­tions, lo­cat­ed on three-and-a-half acres of land, is its ware­house, the com­pa­ny need­ing more space than the com­pact El So­cor­ro Road, San Juan, fac­to­ry al­lowed. At Char­lieville, the de­liv­ery dri­vers can turn, on­load, of­fload snacks with ease, come rain or shine. New Zealand-born Cur­rie, 42, said the Char­lieville build­ing rep­re­sents an in­vest­ment in ca­pac­i­ty that has been in use since Au­gust 16, 2008.

In­side the ware­house are ceil­ing-high racks stacked with dozens of pal­lets, loaded with snacks, from Chipz Nat­ur­al to Tor­tillaz Cheese.

Cur­rie said the sup­plies in the ware­house will turn over in one week. Last Fri­day, the space was on­ly two-thirds filled. All that to say that snacks–whether it's Big Foot or a pack of Chips Cream and Onion–rep­re­sent big busi­ness. Cur­rie said the busi­ness of snacks is worth be­tween $300 and $400 mil­lion. Be­ing the con­ser­v­a­tive com­pa­ny that Hol­i­day Snacks is, Cur­rie didn't say how much of that fig­ure the com­pa­ny makes.

"Snack are an every­day thing. We con­tin­ue to move vol­umes. Hol­i­day Snacks is the leader in mar­ket share. We are con­fi­dent that we are the lead­ing com­pa­ny, not just in Trinidad, but in the Caribbean," said Cur­rie, who's mar­ried to a Trinida­di­an in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy (IT) spe­cial­ist he met in Ja­maica. More on that lat­er. Ac­tu­al­ly, it was a sur­prise that the com­pa­ny agreed to a re­quest for an in­ter­view giv­en its ex­treme­ly low me­dia pro­file. Much to this re­porter's sur­prise, Cur­rie laid down two con­di­tions: that no pho­to­graph be tak­en of him for "per­son­al se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons" and that the chair­man of the com­pa­ny did not want the par­ent com­pa­ny of Hol­i­day Snacks iden­ti­fied. The in­ter­view con­tin­ued as nei­ther con­di­tion ham­pered the sto­ry.

Ex­ports

Cur­rie said Hol­i­day Snacks ex­ports to the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean: from Suri­name to Ja­maica, St Vin­cent, Do­mini­ca, Grena­da, St Lu­cia, An­tigua, Bar­ba­dos. Of all its mar­kets, Cur­rie said T&T is its most de­vel­oped, with room for growth. Last Fri­day, work­ers were pack­ing two con­tain­ers with snacks bound for St Lu­cia and Grena­da.

"Our busi­ness is 50 (per cent) lo­cal, 50 ex­port. In terms of the prod­uct range, we prob­a­bly have 40 prod­ucts that we sell lo­cal­ly and 40 prod­ucts that we sell ex­port, just not the same 40. In to­tal, we have about 60 prod­ucts." Ear­li­er this year, Karen de Mont­brun, for­mer pres­i­dent of the T&T Man­u­fac­tur­ers' As­so­ci­a­tion (TTMA), had said that pen­e­trat­ing new mar­kets is not easy as a prod­uct that is pop­u­lar with cus­tomers in one coun­try may not be so in an­oth­er.

Hol­i­day Snacks or­ders its in­gre­di­ents–whether it's cream and onion, cheese, corn, plan­tain, pep­per or salt, pre­mixed and in bulk–from flavour hous­es and sup­pli­ers in the Unit­ed States, Mex­i­co and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca. Cur­rie, a food tech­nol­o­gist by train­ing, un­der­stands that about cus­tomers and their favourite snacks. For in­stance, Trinida­di­ans and Guyanese like spicy prod­ucts, es­pe­cial­ly chil­dren. "We have a spicy tor­tilla, Big Foot hot and spicy called Hot Foot. In fact, what we found when mak­ing that prod­uct is we couldn't be­lieve how hot the chil­dren want­ed it.

"They want­ed it hot­ter than we were pre­pared to give them ac­tu­al­ly. They would keep ask­ing for more pep­per, like a cap­sicum pep­per," said Cur­rie, who's a pep­per mouth him­self. "I eat more pep­per than my Trinida­di­an wife. I just can't eat a plain dou­bles." Cur­rie used to buy dou­bles in Long Cir­cu­lar, op­po­site the mall, but the lines be­came too long, so he switched to a ven­dor near Smoky and Bun­ty, St James, where he usu­al­ly or­ders two dou­bles. With pep­per, of course.

Old com­pa­ny, new own­ers

In its pre­vi­ous in­car­na­tion, Hol­i­day Snacks was known as Hol­i­day Foods. Cur­rie said the com­pa­ny was orig­i­nal­ly found­ed in the 1960s by Ver­non Charles, who has since mi­grat­ed. The pro­duc­tion plant is still in its orig­i­nal spot: op­po­site Gup­py's gas sta­tion on El So­cor­ro Road. The present man­age­ment bought out Hol­i­day Foods, which had dif­fer­ent own­ers over the years, when it was in re­ceiver­ship. At that time of re­ceiver­ship, it was owned by an in­sur­ance com­pa­ny. The new own­ers set about in­vest­ing in un­der­stand­ing the snacks busi­ness, re­plac­ing old equip­ment, mod­ernising the fac­to­ry, boost­ing its sales­force and look­ing for ex­port mar­kets, which did not ex­ist then.

Cur­rie said many peo­ple had fond mem­o­ries of the Hol­i­day brand.

"It was recog­ni­tion and all those things, but it just took a long time to right the com­pa­ny. I joined the anony­mous group," he said with a laugh, "in 2002, but dur­ing our first year, we had to fig­ure out what we want­ed to be." Cur­rie, whose favourite snacks is plan­tain chips, said the com­pa­ny is clear that it's in a busi­ness with al­most un­lim­it­ed growth po­ten­tial. "If you go to the su­per­mar­ket, and you buy tooth­paste, if you have three tubes of tooth­paste at home, you are not go­ing to brush your teeth any more. If you have a cup­board full of snacks, it will be eat­en. If you full up that cup­board again (with snacks), they are go­ing to get eat­en.

"So we are in the busi­ness of mak­ing peo­ple hap­py every­day through mak­ing af­ford­able and great-tast­ing and avail­able snacks. That's what we are in the busi­ness of. We make mil­lions of packs of snacks every month. "In the near fu­ture, we want to dou­ble our busi­ness. The thing with snacks is that peo­ple get bored. They want new things. They like a lit­tle in­no­va­tion, a lit­tle ex­cite­ment. You eat snacks for a lit­tle treat, a lit­tle dis­trac­tion, so it can't be bor­ing, it can't be the same; a lit­tle pick-me-up. I must have (my snack) at the end of the af­ter­noon, about 4 o'clock." As part of its ex­pan­sion dri­ve, Hol­i­day Snacks has in­vest­ed mil­lions in new pack­ag­ing equip­ment, join­ing Laugh­lin & De Gannes, Vem­co Ltd, KC Con­fec­tionery Ltd and TYE Man­u­fac­tur­ing Com­pa­ny Ltd, which have done like­wise to make their op­er­a­tions more ef­fi­cient.

Part­ner­ship with peo­ple

The cor­ri­dor of the two-storey Char­lieville build­ing is lined with black-and-white framed pho­tographs of em­ploy­ees in uni­form–their hair cov­ered with caps–at work on the pro­duc­tion lines, pack­ing snacks in plas­tic bags or box­ing them. Many of those em­ploy­ees saw the framed pho­tographs when the build­ing was first com­mis­sioned for the first time. "We said to them, this place be­longs to you. You have built this place. You have no idea the re­sponse. Some peo­ple cried. We de­lib­er­ate­ly want to re­mind every­body who comes through here that these are the peo­ple who have brought us here." Hol­i­day Snacks em­ploys about 500 peo­ple, about 300 of whom work at El So­cor­ro. "I must em­pha­sise any­thing the com­pa­ny has achieved has been through hav­ing a fan­tas­tic work­force. Our peo­ple are or­di­nary peo­ple, but we help them do ex­tra­or­di­nary things. "We are very fo­cused on form­ing a part­ner­ship with the peo­ple who work here and cre­at­ing an en­vi­ron­ment where they can come and do their best."

Cur­rie in the Caribbean

Cur­rie met his wife, Nicole, in Ja­maica, where he worked with the New Zealand Dairy Board–think An­chor Cheese–which then had an op­er­a­tion with GraceKennedy Ltd in Ja­maica. "The op­por­tu­ni­ty came up, and I said, why not, so I land­ed in Ja­maica. At that time, the com­pa­ny was do­ing some in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy (IT) work and a cer­tain Trinidad con­sul­tant came up, whose name was Nicole Lawrence, who's now Nicole Cur­rie–al­though be­ing called Cur­rie in Trinidad, your friends give you hell. "I'd have nev­er thought cur­ry was pop­u­lar here, not be­fore I came to the Caribbean. I met her there and we got mar­ried. We lived there, we lived in Mex­i­co for a while, we lived in the Unit­ed King­dom for a cou­ple of years, and then we were ready to start a fam­i­ly and we want­ed to start it near one of our fam­i­lies and Trinidad worked out bet­ter for that."

On his desk is a cal­en­dar made by Ko­dak with pic­tures of him, his wife and their two chil­dren, Megan, sev­en, and Math­ias, four. It was a Fa­ther's Day gift. Cur­rie said he land­ed in Trinidad on a Sat­ur­day, met with the chair­man of the par­ent com­pa­ny on the Mon­day and was hired a few weeks lat­er. "The Dairy Board had op­er­a­tions in Mex­i­co, so I was trans­ferred across there for about two years in the late 1990s. They had bought a busi­ness there and were try­ing to de­vel­op it. I went there in the ca­pac­i­ty of busi­ness de­vel­op­ment.

"The Unit­ed King­dom was a com­bi­na­tion of things: as an IT con­sul­tant, the Y2K was com­ing–you know, the biggest hoax in his­to­ry–so there was good op­por­tu­ni­ty for my wife and, at the same time, I com­plet­ed an MBA from City Uni­ver­si­ty near Lon­don. I got a schol­ar­ship to do that.

"I had been with the Dairy Board for more than ten years, so it was quite a de­ci­sion to leave, but it was one of those sit­u­a­tions in life where we had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to live in Eu­rope, no kids, so you can trav­el and do what you want to do, so we went. "So I was a kept man for a year. I made peace with it," said Cur­rie, laugh­ing.