The erup­tion at the mud vol­cano off Cas­cadoux Trace last Thurs­day may have brought some at­ten­tion to the area via news head­lines, but sev­er­al new busi­ness op­er­a­tors are hop­ing to seize up­on in­creas­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties avail­able in Ma­yaro.

On Tues­day, the Sky­land Cafe opened its doors in Plai­sance Vil­lage in the south­east­ern com­mu­ni­ty, op­po­site the Ma­yaro Gov­ern­ment Pri­ma­ry School ground.

“We are in South, Ma­yaro to be ex­act. Where there is oil, gas and fish­ing, and most im­por­tant­ly beau­ti­ful peo­ple,” Sky­land Cafe co-own­er Rox­anne Oma­lo told the Busi­ness Guardian.

The new busi­ness, she ex­plained, is geared to­wards those look­ing to save mon­ey in the tough eco­nom­ic cli­mate. At the same time, she hopes to build up­on re­newed in­ter­est in the area.

“My sis­ter and I de­cid­ed to part­ner, we just want­ed to bring a dif­fer­ent vibe to Ma­yaro. We know the econ­o­my these days may not be in every­one’s favour, so we de­cid­ed to do a bud­get-friend­ly cafe so we could ac­com­mo­date every­one,” said Oma­lo, “Our break­fast would be subs, ham, cheese, you name it as well as our lunch­es dai­ly will be 20 (dol­lars) for plen­ty.”

She not­ed the area has seen in­creased ac­tiv­i­ty re­cent­ly with­in the oil and gas sec­tor, in ad­di­tion to it be­ing an at­trac­tion for stay­ca­tion and fish­ing en­thu­si­asts. But they want­ed to share the hos­pi­tal­i­ty the area is known for through the busi­ness.

“We are a fam­i­ly-ori­ent­ed busi­ness. So when you come to Sky­land Cafe, you will leave know­ing that Ma­yaro is noth­ing but pure vibes,” said Oma­lo, who al­so shared the in­spi­ra­tion be­hind the name.

“So (the idea) for Sky­land Cafe was formed in late 2023, be­cause of my daugh­ter. She is named Sky­lar. When I gave birth to her. I de­cid­ed to do some­thing for her. I did some­thing for my son when he was born, so I de­cid­ed to in­cor­po­rate my daugh­ter in­to the busi­ness as­pect. So that’s how Sky­line Cafe came about,” said Oma­lo.

Open­ing day re­ac­tions were pos­i­tive with one of its first cus­tomers, Dar­ius Alexan­der, an em­ploy­ee at Massy Wood, say­ing the com­mu­ni­ty has been wait­ing for a spot like Sky­land Cafe to be opened for some time.

While Oma­lo ac­knowl­edged the eco­nom­ic chal­lenges fac­ing most, she is con­fi­dent the busi­ness will do well.

“With faith hard work and hon­esty, we know we are go­ing to go a long way,” said Oma­lo.

Her op­ti­mism may have been piqued by the suc­cess of He­roes Phar­ma­cy, an­oth­er re­cent­ly opened busi­ness, which is al­so lo­cat­ed in the Plai­sance Vil­lage area in Ma­yaro.

Last No­vem­ber, the phar­ma­cy, which first start­ed op­er­a­tions in Rio Claro in 2019, opened its doors in the home­town of its own­er, Kei­del Boodram.

He told the Busi­ness Guardian that the new branch has seen good busi­ness in re­cent weeks and he had been es­pe­cial­ly buoyed by the home­town sup­port.

“My fam­i­ly is orig­i­nal­ly from Ma­yaro and be­cause of that, the sup­port is al­ready flow­ing in. We no­ticed an uptick in sales ac­tu­al­ly at the end of De­cem­ber in­to Jan­u­ary and we are look­ing to the fu­ture very pos­i­tive­ly for busi­ness in Ma­yaro,” said Boodram, who not­ed that his prox­im­i­ty to Moo­nan’s Hard­ware, which is a suc­cess­ful fam­i­ly busi­ness in the area, has helped.

He ex­plained that the re­cent erup­tion did not dis­rupt busi­ness, de­spite the phar­ma­cy hav­ing clients near the af­fect­ed area.

“Con­cern­ing the mud vol­cano erup­tion in Cas­cadoux, it hasn’t af­fect­ed us at all re­al­ly. We do de­liv­ery to Ker­na­ham Vil­lage and Cas­cadoux and we are still ser­vic­ing our cus­tomers as usu­al,” said Boodram, when asked about the im­pact of the re­cent erup­tion.

Oth­er en­tre­pre­neurs in the area have even start­ed en­cour­ag­ing young­sters in the area to start learn­ing skills so that they too can ben­e­fit from the in­creased ac­tiv­i­ty in the area.

This is the case for Rene­ka Granger who has seen suc­cess with her hair­dress­ing busi­ness Locs by Ren.

“I start­ed off do­ing busi­ness at the age of nine years. Af­ter that, I de­cid­ed to take it se­ri­ous­ly. Open­ing a school was a plus for me, en­cour­ag­ing me to have young peo­ple take part in trades like this be­cause at the end of the day, the young peo­ple who don’t re­al­ly have the ed­u­ca­tion could have a trade,” said Granger, “It was a plus for me to have the young girls tak­ing part in one of the skills like hair­dress­ing.”

Granger ad­mit­ted that it is not al­ways easy to make a name in the busi­ness are­na, but she want­ed to in­stil in her stu­dents that start­ing a busi­ness did in­volve a learn­ing curve as well as tri­al and er­ror.

“This jour­ney was re­al­ly tough for me even though there been falls (for me) in be­tween but I nev­er re­al­ly gave it up or stood down. I keep stand­ing strong. One of the things I want to men­tion to the young ladies is that this is some­thing that would not start off at your best. This is some­thing that they can try and see (what works). It is some­thing that re­quires en­cour­ag­ing, “ said Granger who went from be­ing a stu­dent at the Civil­ian Con­ser­va­tion Corps Pro­gramme to a tu­tor there and has since even of­fered cours­es at oth­er schools be­fore es­tab­lish­ing her rov­ing school called Ren’s Cos­me­tol­ogy School.

The in­creas­ing in­ter­est in busi­ness in the area can al­so be seen by the re­cent ac­co­lades gained by the Guay­may En­er­gy Al­liance Cred­it Union (GEACU), which was named the Most Out­stand­ing Cred­it Union Over­all at the Co-op­er­a­tive Cred­it Union League of T&T’s awards last No­vem­ber.

The cred­it union, which is named af­ter the ar­eas it pri­mar­i­ly serves; Guayagua­yare and Ma­yaro, al­so won Most Im­proved Fi­nan­cial Per­for­mance and Best Fi­nan­cial Per­for­mance prizes at the award cer­e­mo­ny.

In an in­ter­view with the Busi­ness Guardian last year, GEACU pres­i­dent Mar­vin Durham said the vast ma­jor­i­ty of the cred­it union base did come from those ar­eas and it had worked to de­vel­op the area through its ac­tiv­i­ty. He not­ed that he had seen sig­nif­i­cant strides in the area over the year.

The cred­it union has con­nec­tions to the en­er­gy sec­tor, but while its name is a com­bi­na­tion of the main ar­eas it serves, its reach has al­ways been na­tion­al, Durham ex­plained.

“The Guay­may En­er­gy Al­liance Cred­it Union, which was for­mer­ly the Amo­co Em­ploy­ee Cred­it Union start­ed in 1975 in our of­fice in Port-of-Spain. At that time it was a de­ci­sion tak­en by the em­ploy­ees to mit­i­gate against the is­sues of the mon­ey lenders, most of them would have been com­ing from the con­trac­tors. And al­so it was a way of em­ploy­ees help­ing em­ploy­ees in terms of al­le­vi­at­ing some of the chal­lenges that they may have had in terms of meet­ing their ex­pens­es,” Durham told the Busi­ness Guardian.

“Around 1999/2000 we be­came an open cred­it union, mean­ing that we were no longer fo­cus­ing pri­mar­i­ly on em­ploy­ees, but ac­tu­al­ly we ex­tend­ed the mem­ber­ship to per­sons who would have been res­i­dents of the Ma­yaro/Guayagua­yare area and even ex­pand­ed that fur­ther in 2015 when we went na­tion­al in terms of gain­ing mem­ber­ship for em­ploy­ees and the cred­it union,” he said.