In the very year Kevin Ragbir was born, his grandfather opened a bar in Chase Village.
He called it Nice Place and he welcomed several of his colleagues who worked beside him at Caroni 1975 Limited to patronise the new establishment.
The bar was passed on to his son, who continued operations until it was passed on to Ragbir.
While Ragbir’s father had opted to keep a traditional view in the maintenance of the business, Ragbir believed Nice Place needed to modernise and adapt.
“It’s been a business that has been passed on from generation to generation. It started 33 years ago. That was the year I was born. It started with my grandfather. My dad and I took it over about seven to eight years ago,” he said. “It would have been nothing like this. Actually, it was just the indoor area. The outdoor area was empty, just an empty piece of land. That developed gradually over the years with slow investments throughout the years, eventually turning it into this.”
Ragbir had, for the most part, respected his father’s wishes to keep the main bar close to its classic set-up. However, he has been navigating a tightrope of managing the expansion and keeping costs for customers down.
“The initial vision, ideally, was to develop a client base that would cater for everyone. Cater for all classes of people. So that was something that I’ve kept over the years. In all the investments that I did, I kept my prices the same throughout the years, because even when we had price increases, I try my best to cushion the cost of those things, and gradually when I was unable to, the price increase was very minimal. Like one dollar on the price of the beer,” said Ragbir, who explained that while he typically used the profits from the business to fund his investments, he took out a bank loan to begin some of the more extensive expansion of the property.
Then COVID-19 struck and Nice Place, like many other bars, was closed for business for almost two years.
It proved to be an extremely difficult time for Ragbir and his family as the bar had been the family’s main income generator.
“That has definitely been very difficult for us. I would say the only thing that was able to save us, in that aspect of it, is we have no rental costs. So it is a family business, where we live and grow up here. So the only reason we were able to survive here was because of no rental costs. Even after it took us a good couple of months, probably even a year to see the sales that we have been getting before the COVID period here,” he said. “It took a big, big toll on us. This is a family-run business. This is the source of income for the entire family and it’s been almost two years that we had to close. So we had no source of income coming in for those two years.”
Despite that setback, Ragbir continued to believe in his vision for Nice Place, and opted to take a second loan, after the COVID restrictions were lifted, to complete the renovations he had planned for the bar.
The renovations included the upgrade and addition of new modern washrooms for both men and women, the construction of two new kitchen areas as well as a specialised cocktail bar.
Additionally, ahead of the 2022 FIFA World Cup Ragbir invested in several outdoor screens to capitalise on sports fans seeking to view matches in an open-air environmment.
“It was definitely just a bar and then it turned into a restaurant and bar and now it’s a full sports bar. So for all the major events we have we do huge setups like the huge outdoor screens. On those elements I had to invest in heavily was on high-quality screens for this. We have a lot of our screens specifically for the outdoors for good lighting. Yeah, definitely. This is the spot for matchdays,” he said.
That served as a much-needed boost for the bar ahead of the completion of other upgrades at the restaurant.
These investments, Ragbir said, started to pay off properly in February as word began to spread of an upscale restaurant and bar in a not-too-familiar location.
“Customers (when they give feedback) to us, say they would never think that there’s an establishment like this in this particular area. Because it’s off the main road, it’s off the highway. So you have to actually find it. A lot of customers who have come, one of the main things they say is they love it. They love the fact that they feel comfortable and safe at this location. And they would never think that they could find a restaurant and bar in such a rural area,” said Ragbir.
He said, however, he plans to expand further with hopes of adding a building which would be suitable for corporate functions, while adding additional attractions such as a weekly brunch to encourage new faces to come to have a time at Nice Place.
“My goal, as well, is to continuously improve,” said Ragbir, adding “With the planned expansion, there will be more food options in our kitchen. We’d like to introduce a sushi bar. Pizza. Definitely as time goes on, we want to continuously improve, and bring customers into the establishment as our aim is for customer satisfaction. We want returning customers. We want people to come here to see and feel comfortable.”