Sea­son­al sales are not of­ten seen as slow or stag­nant, but the re­cent weeks have seen these words used as the de­scrip­tor across var­i­ous sec­tors in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Ear­li­er this week, many on so­cial me­dia ex­pressed shock when KFC & Piz­za Hut vice pres­i­dent Roger Ramb­harose said sales at the pop­u­lar fried chick­en chain had ex­pe­ri­enced "a bit of a slow­down in the last cou­ple months."

Ramb­harose ex­plained that val­ue meals still at­tract­ed steady sales it did lit­tle to move the nee­dle sig­nif­i­cant­ly com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year.

He ac­knowl­edged there were sev­er­al eco­nom­ic fac­tors, such as job loss­es and fi­nan­cial un­cer­tain­ty, that had im­pact­ed traf­fic at the restau­rants.

He made the com­ment a short dis­tance from the KFC In­de­pen­dence Square branch, which once re­port­ed world record-break­ing sales in 2000, but the cli­mate in 2025 of re­gion­al ten­sion and job loss­es is far dif­fer­ent from the busi­ness land­scape at the turn of the mil­len­ni­um.

Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Quick Ser­vice Hold­ings, Daniel Fakoory, agreed that in 2025, the search for val­ue was com­mon among cus­tomers at the com­pa­ny’s fast food restau­rants, Wendy’s, Domi­no’s, and Pi­ta Pit.

“We have the same ex­pe­ri­ence. We op­er­ate in the same in­dus­tries and serve the same cus­tomers, more or less. So yes, we are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the same slow­down, dri­ven and I be­lieve, by the eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty that the coun­try ex­pe­ri­enced in the last 12 months,” said Fakoory, in a tele­phone in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian on Tues­day.

“It wasn’t so much of a slow­down as much as it was a change from what we nor­mal­ly sell. So, we saw oth­er prod­ucts pick up, and cus­tomers are al­so lean­ing more to­wards the val­ue op­tions, so trans­ac­tion counts re­main the same,” he said. “It’s what cus­tomers are choos­ing. More dis­cre­tionary spend­ing, I should say, is what you’re see­ing more.”

Fakoory said this could al­so be seen at the com­pa­ny’s gro­cery brand Food Hall in Pi­ar­co, as sales in­creased for spe­cif­ic items while oth­er ar­eas fell.

“The flour and the sta­ples that the peo­ple use and oth­er items that peo­ple nor­mal­ly will out­source or go to the restau­rants for, they’re now buy­ing and prob­a­bly cook­ing at home a lit­tle bit more. So, we’ve seen some of those cat­e­gories im­prove in some ar­eas, but noth­ing of sig­nif­i­cance,” said Fakoory.

Pres­i­dent of the Su­per­mar­ket As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T Bion­di Bachew said the pub­lic large­ly grav­i­tat­ed to­ward cost-friend­ly brands in 2025.

“With the last decade ex­hibit­ing low-to-mod­er­ate GDP growth at best, the sup­ply chain, led by im­porter/dis­trib­u­tors and man­u­fac­tur­ers, has di­ver­si­fied its of­fer­ings to in­clude a broad­er range of low­er-cost con­sumer prod­ucts along­side tra­di­tion­al lega­cy brands. Over that time, in­clud­ing 2025, we’ve seen an in­crease in de­mand for these prod­ucts, with these brands gain­ing mar­ket share with­in their re­spec­tive cat­e­gories, ie, oil, soap pow­der, tu­na, etc,” said Bachew, who was hope­ful there could be a pos­i­tive change in 2026, but he ac­knowl­edged there was still some rollover from last year.

He said, “In 2026, we will be look­ing at the eco­nom­ic im­pact of job cuts that have hap­pened. While there is an un­der­stand­ing that some of those af­fect­ed could seek em­ploy­ment in the pri­vate sec­tor, in the short term, this co­hort would re­duce spend­ing, which would have a knock-on ef­fect on busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty.”

Chair­man of pub­licly list­ed En­deav­our Hold­ings, John Aboud was an­oth­er who used the word “flat” to de­scribe the busi­ness cli­mate.

En­deav­our, which owns Price Plaza, Up­town Mall and Bri­ar Place, had re­port­ed a drop in prof­its and rev­enues in its lat­est fi­nan­cial re­port for the six-month pe­ri­od end­ed Oc­to­ber 31, 2025.

Aboud said he could on­ly re­late com­plaints passed on to him by his ten­ants, who have al­most unan­i­mous­ly stat­ed that there has been no re­al move­ment in their busi­ness over the past year.

“Ob­vi­ous­ly, they would gen­er­ate their busi­ness ac­tiv­i­ty through sales, re­tail sales. And the com­plaint has been that it’s been flat,” said Aboud.

He would not spec­u­late on what may be the un­der­ly­ing cause of the stag­nant busi­ness, but he said the sit­u­a­tion was not ide­al.

“What­ev­er the rea­sons may be. The point is busi­ness­peo­ple look for­ward to some de­gree of growth every year, whether it’s 5 per cent, 3 per cent or 10 per cent de­pend­ing on how ro­bust the econ­o­my is. But the last 12 months, and even be­fore that, busi­ness has been at best flat. At best flat,” said Aboud. “Some peo­ple have re­port­ed a re­duc­tion in sales.”

If there is a cau­tion­ary tale with re­gard to this sit­u­a­tion, one can look to last week’s clo­sure of the Home Store at Pen­ny­wise Plaza in Ch­agua­nas. It was the fourth Home Store branch closed since De­cem­ber 2024.

The brand’s par­ent com­pa­ny, pub­licly list­ed LJ Williams, had not­ed that sales dwin­dled con­sis­tent­ly over time as a re­sult of con­sumers ex­er­cis­ing dis­cre­tionary spend­ing. This, com­bined with strug­gles to ac­cess for­eign ex­change, left the com­pa­ny with no choice but to down­size.

Chair­man Law­ford Dupres stat­ed that the Pen­ny­wise Plaza branch was kept open as it had been iden­ti­fied as one of its two high per­form­ing branch­es along­side the com­pa­ny’s Barataria branch, which was op­er­at­ed not just as a re­tail out­let but as an in­te­grat­ed dis­tri­b­u­tion hub.

How­ev­er, there were some who saw growth over the pe­ri­od.

Can­dice Be­jai, the gen­er­al man­ag­er of Cap­i­tal Hold­ings Ltd, said there had been in­creased de­mand at their venues, Val­park Shop­ping Cen­tre and Shoppes of Ari­ma,

“With­in those two plazas, we have no­ticed an in­creased de­mand for both re­tail and food. Es­pe­cial­ly so with­in this Christ­mas sea­son just gone, where both the plazas were ex­treme­ly busy and had sig­nif­i­cant­ly high cus­tomer traf­fic,” said Be­jai.

Fakoory how­ev­er, was op­ti­mistic there could be some change giv­en re­cent de­vel­op­ments in the US/Venezuela stand­off.

“I think 2025 was a chal­leng­ing year for the coun­try, change of gov­ern­ment, change of eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, un­cer­tain­ty in the re­gion, with ob­vi­ous­ly what’s hap­pen­ing in Venezuela, but now that there’s some light ahead in terms of trans­paren­cy in what’s ac­tu­al­ly hap­pen­ing in the re­gion,” he said.

“The gov­ern­ment seems to have some kind of di­rec­tion in terms of what they’re do­ing. I think we’re op­ti­mistic. We’re op­ti­mistic to see things pick back up. We’re hope­ful.”

The cau­tious stance of con­sumers had been not­ed in the re­cent­ly re­leased Mon­e­tary Pol­i­cy Com­mit­tee re­port, which stat­ed “the flu­id geopo­lit­i­cal ten­sion be­tween the US and neigh­bour­ing Venezuela had con­tributed to build­ing eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty.”

The MPC had al­so not­ed a month ear­li­er that there had been a dip in point-of-sale ac­tiv­i­ty, sug­gest­ing a dip in re­tail ac­tiv­i­ty as well.