Haa­gen-Dazs, a US fran­chise owned lo­cal­ly by Had­co Ltd, ex­pects fur­ther growth in the T&T mar­ket, the com­pa­ny's mar­ket­ing man­ag­er said."The T&T mar­ket has re­al­ly em­braced the Haa­gen-Dazs brand, and with the Se­cret Sen­sa­tions line, we on­ly ex­pect bet­ter things for it," Kim­ber­ly Fras­er, mar­ket­ing man­ag­er of Had­co Ltd's food di­vi­sion said. She was speak­ing at the com­pa­ny's prod­uct line launch at its West Mall branch.

The Se­cret Sen­sa­tions line fea­tures two new flavours of Haa­gen-Dazs ice cream: creme brulee and choco­lat fon­dant.She said the feed­back Haa­gen-Dazs has been re­ceiv­ing at su­per­mar­kets, and from cus­tomers Had­co speaks to di­rect­ly, sub­stan­ti­ates her be­lief that the bran­dis poised for fur­ther growth.

Haa­gen-Dazs has six branch­es in T&T, all lo­cat­ed in shop­ping malls. Eller­slie Plaza, Mar­aval, Gulf City in San Fer­nan­do, and Movi­eTowne are the top sell­ers, with West Mall, Price Plaza, and Gulf City (To­ba­go) not far be­hind, she said. She said plans are in mo­tion for ex­pan­sion.Had­co chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer Robert Hadad said the next venue may be Trinci­ty.

"We strate­gi­cal­ly place them where we will be able to get good traf­fic, but at the same time where there is good park­ing space avail­able, be­cause re­mem­ber we want Haa­gen-Dazs to be an ex­pe­ri­ence for our cus­tomers," Fras­er said.This is im­por­tant when invit­ing friends and fam­i­ly for ice cream, she added.

The mar­keter said the com­pa­ny will do more work to raise aware­ness that Haa­gen-Dazs is open up to 11 pm, even af­ter the malls have closed. She said peo­ple think be­cause the mall clos­es at 7 pm, so too do the Haa­gen-Dazs stores.Af­ter 7 pm is not too late to have ice cream, es­pe­cial­ly when the tar­get mar­ket is be­tween 18 and 35, and as she put it, "Every­body loves Haa­gen-Dazs."

Hadad, who will be fea­tured in a Busi­ness Guardian in­ter­view this week, en­dorsed this when he said that, from look­ing at Haa­gen-Dazs ad­ver­tise­ments, it is clear the ice cream is not just for chil­dren.Fras­er said Haa­gen-Dazs has been in T&T for ten years. It start­ed in 2003 at Eller­slie Plaza in Mar­aval.