In­nis Fran­cis

An­dre Ay­ers does not want his grilled-food busi­ness to re­main what many de­scribe as a “hid­den gem of the South.”

Sim­ply Gril­li­cious, lo­cat­ed along Cir­cu­lar Road in Vista­bel­la, op­er­ates from Tues­day to Sat­ur­day and has be­come a part-time ven­ture along­side Ay­ers’ full-time em­ploy­ment.

Op­er­at­ing from an open-air lo­ca­tion, the aro­ma of grilled meats, sea­son­ings and spices of­ten reach­es vis­i­tors be­fore they ar­rive at the venue.

Ay­ers said the busi­ness was built around pro­vid­ing cus­tomers with health­i­er din­ing op­tions at af­ford­able prices.

Af­ter fin­ish­ing sec­ondary school and study­ing Culi­nary Arts at the John Don­ald­son Tech­ni­cal In­sti­tute and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism In­sti­tute, he worked in sev­er­al cater­ing jobs be­fore de­vel­op­ing some of the dish­es that would even­tu­al­ly be­come sta­ples of his own menu, in­clud­ing his sweet pota­to mash.

The sweet pota­to mash has be­come one of the busi­ness’s more pop­u­lar side dish­es.

But his sig­na­ture sweet pota­to mash is like the gift that keeps you com­ing back for, care­ful­ly blend­ed with his se­cret in­gre­di­ents, “and us­ing com­plex carbs which would pair well with the grilled foods,” he said.

Ay­ers said he start­ed the busi­ness more than two years ago when it op­er­at­ed un­der the name Grill in De Ville in Pleas­antville. Fol­low­ing chal­lenges that led to the clo­sure of that lo­ca­tion, he de­cid­ed to re­launch and re­brand the busi­ness as Sim­ply Gril­li­cious.

He said the food is fresh­ly pre­pared over an open flame for cus­tomers seek­ing meals made to or­der.

Ay­ers said he tries to cater to a broad cus­tomer base, with menu op­tions rang­ing from grilled meats and burg­ers to lighter choic­es. While some cus­tomers pre­fer take­away meals, oth­ers choose to dine in the open-air set­ting.

The menu in­cludes bone­less chick­en breast, fish fil­let, bread­ed wings, hand­craft­ed beef and lamb burg­ers, pas­ta dish­es, ba­by back ribs and pink salmon.

He said: “I don’t use bread or bis­cuit crumbs. There is noth­ing hold­ing the burg­er to­geth­er with my burg­ers. I am a purest, so when per­sons say this is what makes the best burg­er, so you would not feel it is like bread in­side bread, be­cause it is stiff and dry. We try to let the meat, sauces and sea­son­ing speak for them­selves. Our pat­ties are not sea­soned un­til it goes on the grill. Salt ex­tracts all the mois­ture, so when you add it and have it sit­ting there, you end up with a dry, dense prod­uct.”

Ay­ers said his in­ter­est in cook­ing be­gan dur­ing his teenage years af­ter re­ceiv­ing a chef’s knife as a gift from a chef he knew, an ex­pe­ri­ence that helped shape his ca­reer path.

He cred­its a change in his mar­ket­ing ap­proach as an im­por­tant turn­ing point for the busi­ness.

Ayres said, “A col­league told me about mar­ket­ing in­jec­tion and be­ing known for a par­tic­u­lar prod­uct as op­posed to hav­ing a wide range, and no­body knows what you have to of­fer. I went back to the draw­ing board and de­cid­ed to start with what I thought would grav­i­tate to­wards the cus­tomers and make me com­fort­able to pro­duce.”

The busi­ness has since evolved in­to a fam­i­ly ven­ture in­volv­ing his wife and daugh­ters, Sta­cyann Alexan­der-Ayres, Sier­ra Ay­ers and Saphiar Castil­lo.

“I’m a life­long stu­dent of the culi­nary in­dus­try, and I have nev­er tried any­thing else ever since I left sec­ondary school. It is my first joy. I was help­ing a guy with cater­ing to de­liv­er food. He gave me my first knife, and I nev­er looked back,” Ayres said.

He said that al­though he worked for sev­er­al busi­ness­es and off­shore com­pa­nies af­ter com­plet­ing culi­nary school, he al­ways in­tend­ed to even­tu­al­ly op­er­ate a busi­ness of his own.

Ay­ers is al­so em­ployed as qual­i­ty as­sur­ance per­son­nel with the Na­tion­al School Feed­ing Pro­gramme, Na­tion­al Schools Di­etary Ser­vices Lim­it­ed. He said the role pro­vides the flex­i­bil­i­ty to con­tin­ue build­ing his busi­ness along­side his pro­fes­sion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

“I would like Gril­li­cious to be a house­hold name that is syn­ony­mous with pro­vid­ing qual­i­ty. I want a brand we can stand be­hind, ten toes down. It must be com­pared with qual­i­ty and con­sis­ten­cy, and not be the hid­den gem that most peo­ple would as­so­ciate us with,” Ay­ers said.

He al­so ex­pressed ap­pre­ci­a­tion to cus­tomers who trav­el from com­mu­ni­ties in­clud­ing Barataria, San­gre Grande, Ari­ma, Port of Spain, Pe­nal and Point Fortin to sup­port the busi­ness.