Beet­root cheese, lo­cal­ly made, au­then­tic In­di­an prod­ucts like da­hee and an ar­ray of healthy, dried fruit snacks were among the items show­cased at the Caribbean Food and Bev­er­age Event, which end­ed yes­ter­day.

To strength­en the sec­tor and cre­ate link­ages out­side of T&T, the event, which took place from June 28 to Ju­ly 1, at the Cen­tre of Ex­cel­lence in Ma­coya, fea­tured three el­e­ments—a trade show, a con­fer­ence with rel­e­vant top­ics dis­cussed over a four-day pe­ri­od and ‘The Taste of the Caribbean,’ which show­cased food of the Caribbean pre­pared, in some in­stances, on the spot.

More im­por­tant­ly, the SMEs used the event as a plat­form to help grow their re­spec­tive busi­ness­es.

Chiome Quamie, own­er of Fruit Ist, spoke to the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian of her de­sire to pen­e­trate re­gion­al mar­kets.

Quamie’s de­sire for healthy snacks was brought to fruition a year ago, when she took lo­cal fruits and trans­formed them in­to nu­tri­tious op­tions.

“I was on my fit­ness jour­ney and I no­ticed there was a void for tru­ly af­ford­able dried fruit or fruit-based snacks or snacks, in gen­er­al, that were low­er in salt and sug­ars and which were calo­rie friend­ly,” Quamie, a med­ical doc­tor ex­plained.

Fruit 1st cur­rent­ly sells via its on­line plat­form and Quamie hopes her prod­ucts will soon be avail­able in stores.

Most of the fruits are lo­cal rang­ing from pineap­ple to drag­on fruit to cit­rus. Quamie al­so us­es ap­ple in her mix­es.

Her dried-fruit in­fusers, which can be used in any bev­er­age, is al­so pop­u­lar.

While she sup­ports T&T farm­ers, sourc­ing lo­cal pro­duce can be chal­leng­ing es­pe­cial­ly with the grow­ing neg­a­tive ef­fects of cli­mate change.

“This af­fects the qual­i­ty and avail­abil­i­ty of fruit,” Quamie not­ed.

How­ev­er, she said this is al­so an op­por­tu­ni­ty to work clos­er with lo­cal farm­ers to en­sure there is con­sis­tent quan­ti­ty and qual­i­ty. Quamie hopes in the next two to five years, her en­ti­ty will be­come one of the lead­ing pro­duc­ers and ex­porters of dried fruits out of the Caribbean with her eyes set on Grena­da, St Lu­cia, the Ba­hamas and Guyana.

Cur­rent­ly, she is hold­ing dis­cus­sions with or­gan­i­sa­tions like ex­porTT in paving the way for­ward.

Al­so, she hopes to launch a nu­tri­tion-based, ed­u­ca­tion cam­paign geared to­wards pre-and-pri­ma­ry-school pupils.

The lat­ter is par­tic­u­lar­ly im­por­tant to Quamie as she not­ed that child­hood obe­si­ty re­mains a grow­ing con­cern in the Caribbean.

Echo­ing sim­i­lar sen­ti­ments that lo­cal farm­ers are an im­por­tant el­e­ment in the val­ue chain of SMEs was Makon­nen Mc­Queen of Mac’s Punch­es and Juices.

Pro­duce, he em­pha­sised, must not on­ly be top notch for lo­cal con­sump­tion but must al­so to meet in­ter­na­tion­al re­quire­ments.

In shar­ing his own ex­pe­ri­ence, Mc­Queen said, “I have had some bad ex­pe­ri­ences in terms of pur­chas­ing ground pro­vi­sion from lo­cal farm­ers. There was a time when I pur­chased and 90 per cent of the stuff was not good.”

While he still sup­ports lo­cal as much a pos­si­ble, Mc­Queen sources goods from “up the is­lands” like Grena­da and St Vin­cent.

In busi­ness for about two years, Mc­Queen of­fers a com­bi­na­tion of di­ary and non-di­ary items with unique of­fer­ings in­clud­ing dasheen in his punch­es.

“We try to of­fer things that are not com­mon, but are part of our his­tor­i­cal tra­di­tion. For ex­am­ple, when you go to the Blue Food Fes­ti­val in To­ba­go, you see the non-con­ven­tion­al use of pro­vi­sion,” Mc­Queen ex­plained.

In the fu­ture, he hopes his busi­ness will evolve in­to a dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny to have “about five or six new prod­ucts with the Mac brand.”

An­oth­er SME that gained a lot of trac­tion from mem­bers of the pub­lic at the event was Just Kheese.

Co-found­ed by Jes­sel Chrysos­tom and Loren­zo Smith, the busi­ness al­though around for just one month con­tin­ues to make its mark on the lo­cal mar­ket with its ar­ti­san chess­es such as olive and herbs, black pep­per, chilli and pink cheese (beet­root) all made from T&T in­gre­di­ents.

“So far, we have been do­ing test­ing with a few clients and the feed­back has been tru­ly pos­i­tive. We are still in the pre-or­der op­er­a­tion stages and we have busi­ness-to-busi­ness cus­tomers, but we are try­ing to get in­to the lo­cal re­tail­ers,” Chrysos­tom ex­plained.

Why cheese?

The idea ac­tu­al­ly came from Smith, a pro­fes­sion­al chef with in­ter­na­tion­al train­ing who re­alised there was a gap for lo­cal­ly pro­duced gourmet cheese.

As Just Kheese con­tin­ues to ex­pand, it is hop­ing to al­so en­ter the ho­tel sec­tor and thus far, such talks have been promis­ing.

Au­then­tic In­di­an foods such as pa­neer, pure cow ghee and flavoured da­hee, pro­duced from lo­cal in­gre­di­ents by Farm Fresh Dairy Prod­ucts, a fam­i­ly-owned en­ti­ty is al­so do­ing well.

Co-own­er Don­ny Rogers ex­plained the busi­ness does “the en­tire val­ue chain in cow’s milk.”

At the event, Farm Fresh al­so launched its In­di­an Masala Chai Drink.

In busi­ness for five years, Rogers said they have opt­ed to “ex­pand cau­tious­ly.”

“We are look­ing at ‘cross­ing the Ts and dot­ting the Is’ as that would be the pre­cur­sor to ex­port­ing,” Rogers ex­plained, adding, “Be­cause of the range of prod­ucts we have, the tar­get mar­ket we have would be the en­tire Cari­com from Suri­name go right up. Al­though we know ghee, for in­stance as an eth­nic prod­uct, ghee is clar­i­fied but­ter and that is used through­out the Caribbean.”

He al­so not­ed that due to ben­e­fits for Cari­com coun­tries there will be that com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage for lo­cal man­u­fac­tur­ers.

Re­gard­ing the lo­cal mar­ket, Rogers said that area has “ex­ceed­ed ex­pec­ta­tions.”

“We thought we would have re­ceived a cer­tain amount of hes­i­ta­tion be­cause they are eth­nic prod­ucts, but they at­tract a wide-range of peo­ple and are used cross-cul­tur­al­ly,” Rogers said.

Al­though not in­volved in us­ing lo­cal in­gre­di­ents, T&T com­pa­ny Top­pers con­tin­ues to be one of the coun­try’s lead­ing man­u­fac­tur­ers and ex­porters.

Nicholas Laquis, busi­ness in­no­va­tion man­ag­er told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that the com­pa­ny’s most re­cent­ly launched was Top­pers Onion Rings.

De­scrib­ing the snack as a big hit, “We tried to go for some­thing that is mod­ern and that the younger con­sumer would like,” he said, not­ing that all of its prod­ucts are baked.

While the in­puts are im­port­ed, the pack­ag­ing, how­ev­er, is done lo­cal­ly.

Top­pers was found­ed as a mall kiosk in 2003 ‘pop­ping pop­corn’ and has evolved in­to a full fac­to­ry.

It has a a strong pres­ence in the re­gion with its items in Suri­name, Guyana, Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica and hopes to soon en­ter the US and UK soon.

Ac­cord­ing to Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter, Paula Gopee-Scoon small busi­ness­es, are an in­te­gral part in the back­bone of the coun­try econ­o­my, con­tribut­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 28 per cent to this coun­try’s gross do­mes­tic prod­uct and ac­count for 91 per cent of all reg­is­tered busi­ness­es and em­ploy more than 200,000 peo­ple.