Dr Safeeya Mo­hammed

guardian.wemagazine@gmail.com

“Flavour­ful and more-ish”, that’s how peo­ple de­scribe these gourmet sauces made by Trinida­di­an Jonelle McLeod, a thriv­ing en­tre­pre­neur, self-taught chef and res­i­dent of Vir­ginia US.

Brand­ed ‘ShadoBeni’ and launched dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, Jonelle has found her se­cret to suc­cess and shares her sto­ry with the WE team.

Cook­ing came nat­u­ral­ly to McLeod, a hob­by she felt pas­sion­ate about.

“I grew up lov­ing the kitchen and learn­ing from my Granny, my mom and rel­a­tives. Grow­ing up in Trinidad, I at­ten­tive­ly mir­rored their ac­tions in the kitchen and some­times wrote down the recipes so I can try them on my own. Sub­se­quent­ly, I mi­grat­ed to the US and moved to Vir­ginia, tak­ing up a po­si­tion in the bank­ing sec­tor.

“My en­thu­si­asm and flair for cook­ing flour­ished, as friends and col­leagues al­ways liked ‘tast­ing my pot.’ My pas­sion ex­tend­ed to ed­u­cat­ing per­sons on Caribbean cook­ing, flavours, and tech­niques and I start­ed a so­cial me­dia page. My cir­cle fi­nal­ly un­der­stood that Caribbean food was so much more than jerk chick­en!

“Then came the pan­dem­ic, there were fi­nan­cial fall­outs, liveli­hoods be­ing af­fect­ed and my fi­nan­cial se­cu­ri­ty be­ing one of them. In 2022, af­ter los­ing my job, I knew, this was the time to piv­ot and go full throt­tle in­to my en­tre­pre­neur­ial ven­tures!”

The gen­e­sis of ShadoBeni

“I be­gan mak­ing own pep­per sauces, as I didn’t fan­cy the con­sis­ten­cy and flavour of the ones I found at the su­per­mar­kets in Vir­ginia. Fam­i­ly mem­bers that tast­ed it sug­gest­ed that I had some­thing spe­cial and should sell it.”

From her ex­plo­rations, McLeod rec­og­nized there wasn’t much of a pep­per sauce mar­ket and with fur­ther re­search on pack­ag­ing and the sup­ply chain, en­abling her knowl­edge base, she be­came con­fi­dent to start ShadoBeni.

“I knew with my en­tre­pre­neur­ial skills and back­ground in bank­ing, I could turn this pas­sion in­to prof­itabil­i­ty!

“Hav­ing a great net­work of friends that al­lowed me to ex­per­i­ment on them, they now be­came my mar­ket­ing re­search for tast­ing. They al­so loved the con­cept of bring­ing a fine din­ing Caribbean ex­pe­ri­ence to the com­forts of their home. This turned in­to a full ‘at home chef ser­vice’, all fresh­ly pre­pared meals at your home.

This ser­vice al­so came with added ta­ble decor, set­ting, serv­ing and clean-up. The re­views were phe­nom­e­nal, and my busi­ness grew. So too did the va­ri­ety of Caribbean-flavoured sauces of­fered un­der the ShadoBeni brand.

Which is the most re­quest­ed sauce?

“Hav­ing en­tered the lo­cal farm­ers’ mar­ket here in Vir­ginia, the most re­quest­ed sauce is the Man­go-Ha­banero. It’s a hap­py medi­um be­tween sweet and heat and they love tacos here, so the flavours work with it.”

Can peo­ple tol­er­ate the heat?

“There are the heat seek­ers out there that al­ways look for some­thing dif­fer­ent. There are some that are al­ways look­ing for heat but al­so want flavour with it. Then there’s the crowd that can bare­ly eat black pep­per. My sauces range from mild to scorch­ing hot so there’s some­thing for every­one.

“With­in each sauce, our Tri­ni flavours are in­fused. By us­ing au­then­tic in­gre­di­ents, my clients found the ShadoBeni gourmet sauces to be unique and the de­mand grew. Us­ing fresh in­gre­di­ents, there are no preser­v­a­tives added. Be it the flavour of tamarind, gua­va, man­go, ban­danya in my sauces, I of­fered var­ied lev­els of heat. I al­so love pay­ing homage to Trin­ba­go any chance I get, with my hottest sauce called El Do­ra­do!”

What’s next for ShadoBeni?

“Al­ready I of­fer a ShadoBeni week­ly meal plan­ner that helps per­sons con­struct their meals and stay on track fi­nan­cial­ly all with­in a healthy lifestyle. A def­i­nite ne­ces­si­ty is the ex­pan­sion to a com­mer­cial kitchen to meet the needs of my grow­ing cus­tomer re­quests. A cook­book, more sauces, what­ev­er the uni­verse aligns. I have found once I have an open heart and mind­set to op­por­tu­ni­ties, my pas­sion takes me there!”

Your ad­vice to en­tre­pre­neurs

“Be pa­tient. Noth­ing hap­pens overnight, es­pe­cial­ly in en­tre­pre­neur­ship. You will have many fail­ures and it’s an emo­tion­al roller-coast­er, but you will al­so have many suc­cess mo­ments. Use the ad­ver­si­ties as learn­ings for the next steps and use the suc­cess­es as the fu­el to pow­er your next recipe!”