PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

pe­ter.christo­pher@guardian.co.tt

Lo­cal con­tent cre­ator Cer­ti­fied Samp­son has con­firmed he has plans to take full ad­van­tage of the mo­men­tum of his re­tail ice cream busi­ness, Cer­ti­fied Scoop, by ex­pand­ing across the Caribbean.

“Plans are com­ing along very well. I don’t want to men­tion which Caribbean is­land I want to go to first, but it’s def­i­nite­ly in talks. And we could look at that hap­pen­ing for the year of 2025,” said Jamel “Cer­ti­fied” Samp­son at East Gates Mall, where he opened Cer­ti­fied Scoop’s sec­ond lo­ca­tion yes­ter­day.

Samp­son said he was a bit sur­prised that he had made such progress just over five months af­ter open­ing his first store in South Park mall in Ju­ly 2024. How­ev­er, he ex­plained the de­ci­sion to open a sec­ond store so soon was due to the num­ber of cus­tomers who would trav­el long dis­tances to the San Fer­nan­do lo­ca­tion.

“One thing I re­alised when I opened the store at South Park was the sup­port was amaz­ing. Peo­ple (were) com­ing from far dis­tances. Some­body from To­ba­go came, hon­est­ly, came just from To­ba­go to Trinidad, just to line up for ice cream, just to meet me. So all of those things sort of fu­elled the con­fi­dence in mak­ing that de­ci­sion to open a sec­ond store. How­ev­er, I didn’t ex­pect it to be in this space of time, which is like five months,” said Samp­son, who ad­mit­ted he planned to de­vel­op the brand slow­ly as he had done with the lol­ly brand, which served as a pre­cur­sor to the cre­ation of the store.

East Gates man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Ed­ward Aboud con­firmed that rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the mall did make an ini­tial ap­proach to the con­tent cre­ator con­cern­ing open­ing a store at the shop­ping cen­tre, which has al­so been gain­ing mo­men­tum as a hub in North East Trinidad.

“He’s a sen­sa­tion, a so­cial me­dia sen­sa­tion and to be a part of some­thing like this, we felt that this was ab­solute­ly a unique ex­pe­ri­ence and op­por­tu­ni­ty to work with some­one like this to bring this to fruition. We’re re­al­ly pleased. He has an amaz­ing fan base. He has an amaz­ing prod­uct, and now he’s in an amaz­ing fa­cil­i­ty. So I think we match each oth­er quite well,” said Aboud.

The busi­ness­man said his sis­ter and Samp­son have been talk­ing about this for some time.

“So yes, I would have to say that it was on both sides. The de­sire was there to come to a new lo­ca­tion. And equal­ly, we came to him with the right op­por­tu­ni­ty, and we made it work.”

Aboud said bring­ing Cer­ti­fied Scoop to East Gates was al­so part of the Mall’s aim to bring fam­i­ly friend­ly en­ter­tain­ment to lo­ca­tion, as he con­firmed that the mall would be open­ing a bowl­ing al­ley soon.

“East Gates Mall is a mall an­chored by fam­i­ly en­ter­tain­ment. Soon to come, we have Dim Sum King open­ing, which will be a fam­i­ly eat­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. And then we have the bowl­ing al­ley that will be open in just about three or four weeks, which will be a new ex­pe­ri­ence, We don’t have a bowl­ing al­ley in Trinidad and To­ba­go, so we have a lot of ex­cite­ment. Young peo­ple in Trinidad don’t have enough things to do, and we think that this will help an­chor us as a fam­i­ly en­ter­tain­ment ex­pe­ri­ence, which is part of the de­sire and al­so our dream,” said Aboud.

Samp­son said he would con­tin­ued to use the brand to pro­vide op­por­tu­ni­ties to young peo­ple, con­firm­ing he cur­rent­ly had 13 peo­ple on staff across lo­ca­tions.

The open­ing of the store was at­tend­ed by Youth De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Fos­ter Cum­mings and PNM prospec­tive can­di­date for Laven­tille West, Ka­reem Mar­celle.

Cum­mings said the de­vel­op­ment of lo­cal brands like Cer­ti­fied Scoop was heart­en­ing.

“It’s im­por­tant for us to build our own iden­ti­ty, to have our own brands pros­per­ing and do­ing well, and there­fore any ini­tia­tive like this will re­ceive sup­port, as you can see, from the pub­lic who are very proud to see their stars get­ting in­volved in busi­ness like this,” said Cum­mings.