GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

In an era when many busi­ness­es are tight­en­ing their belts and eye­ing the bot­tom line with cau­tion, the team be­hind Tom­my’s is ex­pand­ing.

For John Tan­nous, the founder of Tom­my’s, the de­ci­sion to plant roots in the Brent­wood Mall area was more about the neigh­bour­hood.

“Brent­wood stood out to us be­cause of the sense of com­mu­ni­ty de­vel­op­ing in that area. The team be­hind the project has done a very thought­ful job with the de­vel­op­ment, and when we saw the space and the en­vi­ron­ment they were cre­at­ing, it felt like a nat­ur­al fit for what Tom­my’s is about.

“From the be­gin­ning our fo­cus has been on cre­at­ing places where peo­ple can gath­er around good beer, good food, and good com­pa­ny.

“Brent­wood gave us the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do that in a part of the coun­try that is grow­ing and evolv­ing.,” Tan­nous told Guardian Me­dia.

This marks Tom­my’s third lo­ca­tion, join­ing its ex­ist­ing branch­es at Movi­eTowne and East Gates. Open­ing a new venue in the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cli­mate is no small feat, but Tan­nous views the ex­pan­sion through a wider lens. He said projects of this mag­ni­tude are planned years in ad­vance, mak­ing them less about tim­ing the mar­ket and more about the en­dur­ing strength of the brand.

“Open­ing a new lo­ca­tion is al­ways a long-term de­ci­sion. Projects like this are usu­al­ly planned well in ad­vance, so it’s less about tim­ing the mo­ment and more about be­liev­ing in what you’re build­ing.

“For us, the fo­cus has al­ways been on con­tin­u­ing to de­vel­op the brand care­ful­ly and cre­at­ing spaces that peo­ple en­joy spend­ing time in. Even in chal­leng­ing pe­ri­ods, peo­ple still val­ue ex­pe­ri­ences and places where they can re­lax and con­nect with oth­ers,” he added.

While the hos­pi­tal­i­ty in­dus­try at large has strug­gled with labour short­ages, Tom­my’s re­lied on its es­tab­lished com­pa­ny cul­ture to at­tract the right tal­ent. Em­ploy­ees al­so stepped up to lead the Brent­wood open­ing, en­sur­ing the brand’s sig­na­ture at­mos­phere re­mained in­tact dur­ing the tran­si­tion.

“Like much of the hos­pi­tal­i­ty in­dus­try, find­ing the right peo­ple can take time. For us the fo­cus has al­ways been on build­ing a team that un­der­stands the cul­ture of the brand and takes pride in what they do.

“We’ve been for­tu­nate to have a strong group of peo­ple who have grown with the com­pa­ny over the years, and many of them have played an im­por­tant role in help­ing us open this new lo­ca­tion,” Tan­nous added.

The path to the Brent­wood open­ing was not with­out its hur­dles. Like any large-scale con­struc­tion project, the team faced lo­gis­ti­cal and co­or­di­na­tion chal­lenges.

How­ev­er, Tan­nous cred­its a sup­port­ive net­work of part­ners and a re­silient in­ter­nal team for nav­i­gat­ing the com­plex­i­ties of the build.

“Any project of this scale comes with chal­lenges. Con­struc­tion, lo­gis­tics, and co­or­di­nat­ing dif­fer­ent part­ners al­ways re­quire pa­tience and prob­lem solv­ing along the way. For­tu­nate­ly we worked with a very sup­port­ive group of part­ners, both on the Brent­wood side and with­in our own team, and that made it pos­si­ble to move through those chal­lenges and bring the project to life,” he said.

De­spite the ex­cite­ment sur­round­ing this third lo­ca­tion, the com­pa­ny is not rush­ing to­ward a fourth.

Tan­nous re­mains fo­cused on the present, em­pha­sis­ing that the im­me­di­ate pri­or­i­ty is to en­sure the Brent­wood site op­er­ates at the high­est stan­dard be­fore con­sid­er­ing fur­ther ex­pan­sion.

“Growth is al­ways some­thing we think about, but it’s im­por­tant to take things one step at a time and make sure each lo­ca­tion is op­er­at­ing the way it should be­fore look­ing too far ahead,” he added.