Aleem Khan

The ice-cream mar­ket in T&T is grow­ing "at a rapid rate," the own­er of the Haa­gen Dazs fran­chise for T&T, Bar­ba­dos and St Lu­cia has said. Speak­ing from the West Mall Haa­gen Dazs out­let, Robert Hadad, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Had­co Group, said in a May 7 in­ter­view: "The mar­ket is grow­ing. If you fol­low Fla­vorite sales over the last five years, they've been in­creas­ing at a rapid rate. They've been sell­ing more ice-cream. Now, they're go­ing to de­fend it, and tell you that they've been sell­ing that ice-cream to ex­port mar­kets, and not to Trinidad, but I ab­solute­ly dis­agree. I be­lieve that the ice-cream cat­e­go­ry has been grow­ing be­cause there is more on of­fer, there's more choice."

Haa­gen Dazs, which has been in T&T since 2003 when it opened its first out­let at Eller­slie Plaza, Mar­aval, has since opened five more out­lets, and is plan­ning two more. Haa­gen Dazs is now at West Mall, West­moor­ings; Movi­eTowne, Port-of-Spain; Price Plaza, Ch­agua­nas; Gulf City, San Fer­nan­do; Gulf City, To­ba­go; and Eller­slie Plaza, Mar­aval.

As for new out­lets, Hadad said: "We've been talk­ing about Trinci­ty for a while."

He said Had­co is in dis­cus­sions with Trinci­ty Mall about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of open­ing an out­let there. All Haa­gen Dazs out­lets in T&T are with­in shop­ping malls, al­though they close at 11 pm, lat­er than mall hours.

A sec­ond new out­let in San Fer­nan­do is al­so planned in the "new mall in (Corinth) San Fer­nan­do where Movi­eTowne is go­ing," he said.

Hadad ex­pects to open that out­let in 2015. He said each new out­let in­volves a US$200,000 (TT$3 mil­lion) ex­pen­di­ture.

Re­fer­ring to the lob­by by lo­cal ice-cream man­u­fac­tur­ers to pro­tect the lo­cal ice-cream mar­ket, he said it is dif­fi­cult "to ex­pand in an at­mos­phere of un­cer­tain­ty," but added he is com­mit­ted to T&T re­gard­less.

"This is our coun­try. We live here. We're stay­ing here. We're not go­ing any­where. We want to see this coun­try do bet­ter. If you pay at­ten­tion to what's hap­pen­ing in Eu­rope and in the Unit­ed States, every­body has tough times," Hadad said. "So we sit down here (in T&T) and all we do is com­plain, com­plain, com­plain, but we have a great coun­try. What we need is good lead­er­ship. We need good guid­ance, good gov­er­nance," he said.

Hadad said he is against pro­tec­tion­ism.

"If we're un­com­pet­i­tive, we need to know what we're com­pet­i­tive at and do that," he said. "We got to bring the brands of the world here. Busi­ness on­ly works on hard work, not on pro­tec­tion."

Ice-cream con­sump­tion

"The over­all mar­ket is in­creas­ing," he said.

Asked where were all these ice-cream eaters go­ing be­fore, Hadad said: "The mar­ket didn't ex­ist. Of course, we don't have ac­tu­al sta­tis­tics, but I be­lieve the per capi­ta con­sump­tion of ice-cream has in­creased tremen­dous­ly in Trinidad."

He said this has to do with eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty in T&T.

"Haa­gen Dazs has filled a void," he said. "It has a lot to do with the fact that the wealth in the coun­try is spread more. The oil and gas mon­ey has spread."

He said the mar­ket for non-al­co­holic af­ter-work en­ter­tain­ment is al­so grow­ing, and the ice-cream mar­ket growth is part of that.

"Peo­ple want to take their kids out. If you look at Movi­eTowne, Movi­eTowne has been grow­ing at a rate," he said. Movi­eTowne, which start­ed in Port-of-Spain, is now in Ch­agua­nas and To­ba­go, and will be in San Fer­nan­do next. He said the mar­ket for non-al­co­holic en­ter­tain­ment and for fam­i­ly en­ter­tain­ment is grow­ing "and Haa­gen Dazs is the place to go."

He said: "It's amaz­ing what's hap­pen­ing with Haa­gen Dazs. You're see­ing a lot of peo­ple will­ing to treat them­selves to a scoop of ice-cream in­stead of a whole tub. The sat­is­fac­tion you get from less is amaz­ing."

Hadad said Haa­gen Dazs has cre­at­ed "an at­mos­phere on the top lev­el, on the high-end lev­el." He said: "You're pay­ing $22 for a scoop of Haa­gen Dazs."

He said sales are al­so good when peo­ple are feel­ing down. "Ice-cream sells a bit more be­cause it's com­fort food. When you're down and out, what do you want to eat? Some­thing to give you that rush."

The fe­male mar­ket is al­so im­por­tant. It is larg­er than the male mar­ket.

Asked why, he said: "Let me put it this way. The tar­get mar­ket for Haa­gen Dazs is ac­tu­al­ly not chil­dren. If you look at the ads, they're sexy, they're sul­try, so who are they in­clud­ing? They're try­ing to bring in the younger (adult) gen­er­a­tion, so the tar­get mar­ket for Haa­gen Dazs is ac­tu­al­ly be­tween 17 and 30, but chil­dren eat ice-cream, so you get the chil­dren (too). That's the tar­get mar­ket for Haa­gen. At a store like this (West Mall), it's re­al­ly to come to in the evenings."

He said Haa­gen Dazs is al­so a good op­tion if "you have a girl­friend and you can't af­ford to take her to a fan­cy restau­rant to spend $200 on her, but you could take her to a nice at­mos­phere, and still have a great ex­pe­ri­ence, with some­one serv­ing, and walk away with a $60 bill for two."

High de­mand

He said Haa­gen Dazs freez­ers are al­so in high de­mand. "You're see­ing peo­ple re­quest­ing Haa­gen Dazs from all over," he said, cit­ing Ma­yaro, Rio Claro, Princes Town and Point Fortin as ex­am­ples.

He said Haa­gen Dazs freez­ers are in ma­jor su­per­mar­kets. "More and more, if you dri­ve around the coun­try, you're go­ing to see (Haa­gen Dazs) freez­ers. A lot of freez­ers. Every­body's ask­ing for them."

No in­vest­ment is re­quired for hav­ing a freez­er in a store. When a freez­er is re­quest­ed, Had­co stud­ies the lo­ca­tion and con­firms suit­abil­i­ty. Haa­gen Dazs stocks the freez­er and col­lects pay­ment based on what sells," he said. Had­co has more than 2,000 freez­ers through­out T&T, in­clud­ing Ben and Jer­ry's, for which Had­co is al­so the dis­trib­u­tor.

Both Ben and Jer­ry's and Haa­gen Dazs are orig­i­nal­ly Amer­i­can brands. Haa­gen Dazs is im­port­ed in­to T&T from France and the US.

Asked about the chal­lenges fac­ing Haa­gen Dazs, Hadad said one of the main chal­lenges is "find­ing good em­ploy­ees." He said he has good peo­ple now, but needs more.

"Rather than giv­ing peo­ple so­cial wel­fare, what we should be do­ing is giv­ing peo­ple train­ing," he said.

On the lo­cal ser­vice in­dus­try, Hadad said: "To serve peo­ple, you need to train peo­ple."

Had­co em­ploys about 700 peo­ple, out of which the Haa­gen Dazs fran­chise in T&T em­ploys about 80. The Had­co boss be­lieves young peo­ple should be en­cour­aged to work in the ser­vice in­dus­try and "see be­yond oil and gas" jobs.

Asked what can the Gov­ern­ment do to help the food in­dus­try, he said: "There are three main things. First, you have to con­trol crime be­cause the food in­dus­try is heav­i­ly re­liant on peo­ple com­ing out at night, and they need to feel and know that they are safe."

"The sec­ond thing is you need to stim­u­late the econ­o­my. You need to get peo­ple's con­fi­dence back up."

"And the most im­por­tant thing for me is you need to fo­cus on the youth and in ed­u­ca­tion, so that the chil­dren, the younger gen­er­a­tions, know that peo­ple in­vest­ment in the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try is vi­able. It's tourism. It en­cour­ages peo­ple."

Blue Bun­ny 4259 ml $98.97 (43.03 ml per dol­lar)

Fla­vorite 2000 ml $49.95 (40.04 ml per dol­lar)

Fla­vorite 1000 ml $29.95 (33.39 ml per dol­lar)

Nes­tle 1420 ml $56.99 (24.92 ml per dol­lar)

Fla­vorite 90 ml $4 (22.5 ml per dol­lar)

Haa­gen Dazs 946 ml $72.97 (12.96 ml per dol­lar)

Haa­gen Dazs 473 ml $46.99 (10.07 ml per dol­lar)

Ben & Jer­ry's 473 ml $46.99 (10.07 ml per dol­lar)

Haa­gen Dazs 100 ml $13.29 (7.52 ml per dol­lar)