For many years Ian Pan­tin would go to cof­fee shops to con­duct busi­ness as the man­ag­er of sev­er­al of the coun­try’s top en­ter­tain­ers.

Over time, the nu­mer­ous trips to these es­tab­lish­ments gave him the idea to start a new ven­ture.

“I used to do man­age­ment of artistes, and I trav­elled around the world meet­ing with var­i­ous record la­bels, and they would take me out to cof­fee shops, just to close busi­ness, or to just en­ter­tain me, be­cause I’m there so I’ve been to many in­de­pen­dent cafés abroad,” Pan­tin said.

“And I got a lik­ing for sit­ting and work­ing at a cafe. So I came back to Trinidad, and I closed my op­er­a­tions in terms of the of­fice space and start­ed do­ing all my meet­ings at cof­fee shops, and then it dawned on me one day, you know, I’m en­joy­ing this so much maybe one that can turn this in­to some­thing of a hob­by and per­haps even in­to a busi­ness,” he said.

What ini­tial­ly was seen as a hob­by soon be­came a full-time project for Pan­tin af­ter the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic de­railed the en­ter­tain­ment sec­tor.

“I said ‘per­haps this is an op­por­tu­ni­ty to do what was in your mind for some time’. And I start­ed to con­cep­tu­alise this whole Ja­va Na­tion. I opened in the mid­dle of COVID which was Jan­u­ary 2021. It took a year to plan it out and open and I need­ed to find a lo­ca­tion,” said Pan­tin, who even­tu­al­ly found the ide­al spot at NIB build­ing at Queen’s Park West.

“We are still new to the busi­ness in terms of the re­tail as­pect of busi­ness. But I want­ed an area that will give me se­cu­ri­ty for my cus­tomers. That’s what NIB of­fered. And of course, I want­ed a glass front and that’s al­so what NIB of­fered. It was ide­al enough for me to bring my cus­tomers in no mat­ter what prod­uct, and they can feel se­cure when they’re hav­ing their cof­fee and bo­ba,” said Pan­tin, the man­ag­ing part­ner/di­rec­tor of Ja­va Na­tion.

De­spite not be­ing in the busiest lo­ca­tion, just over a year af­ter open­ing Pan­tin’s new in­ter­est has found an op­por­tu­ni­ty for ex­pan­sion.

Ja­va Na­tion opened its sec­ond lo­ca­tion on Wednes­day in San Juan along the East­ern Main Road in a build­ing well-known to the com­mu­ni­ty as it for­mer­ly housed the pop­u­lar Pres­i­dente cin­e­ma.

Pan­tin said up­on see­ing the lo­ca­tion he knew it was the right spot for the bur­geon­ing brand.

“In our search for a sec­ond lo­ca­tion we were look­ing for a lo­ca­tion that would be suit­able for the brand. So it wasn’t just about get­ting to open three branch­es in the East or four branch­es in the South and we were look­ing for ba­si­cal­ly if an op­por­tu­ni­ty came up in To­co, Ica­cos, Point where that was suit­able for the brand we will take you there. And what hap­pened was that the Po­lice Cred­it Union was open­ing a five-storey build­ing in the San Juan area, and we heard that they were look­ing for a spot and that the de­sign they had in mind for the build­ing would in­cor­po­rate a cof­fee shop that would match ba­si­cal­ly what we were look­ing at. So they in­vit­ed us there to take a look at it. And the minute I drove up and looked at the set­ting I saw the space and the vi­sion came,” said Pan­tin.

He ex­plained the plans to build the busi­ness would al­so dif­fer from the tra­di­tion­al mod­els as­so­ci­at­ed with fran­chis­es, as he in­tends to build part­ner­ships with the op­er­a­tors of new Ja­va Na­tion lo­ca­tions as op­posed to sim­ply col­lect­ing roy­al­ties for use of the name.

“We haven’t ac­tu­al­ly es­tab­lished it as a fran­chise. We’re look­ing at part­ner­ing with spe­cif­ic groups of peo­ple that want to be­come share­hold­ers with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion, with­in each lo­ca­tion. Each lo­ca­tion is go­ing to be unique, in­stead of ap­proach­ing it from a fran­chise mod­el where peo­ple pay me roy­al­ties. I go as a part­ner with them at these var­i­ous lo­ca­tions that we’re look­ing to set up, “ he said, “So it’s more of a part­ner­ship arrange­ment that we’re hav­ing. There are some peo­ple who want to be in­vestors that are ac­tive­ly in­volved in the day-to-day run­ning of the op­er­a­tion. And then there are oth­ers who would be look­ing for re­turn. We seek both par­ties out. Come up with a busi­ness plan suit­able for the lo­ca­tion and then they open.”

He ex­plained that the brand sought to dif­fer­en­ti­ate it­self from oth­er well-known cof­fee shop brands by its in­clu­sion of Bo­ba Tea.

“It’s a trend­ing thing around the world for teenagers. So 50 per cent of the at­trac­tion at Ja­va is Bo­ba, and the oth­er 50 per cent is for cof­fee. So what we have here is that they have set up a unique sys­tem be­cause there are not many en­ti­ties in T&T that do it this way,” said Pan­tin.

The rapid ex­pan­sion of oth­er cof­fee out­lets lo­cal­ly Pan­tin ad­mit­ted has helped as more peo­ple around T&T are get­ting in­to the habit of head­ing to cof­fee shops. He not­ed that while there has been an in­crease in in­ter­est in com­ing to spots like Ja­va Na­tion, there are still sev­er­al hur­dles which have to be over­come reg­u­lar­ly in terms of do­ing busi­ness.

“There’s a def­i­nite pick up of busi­ness but it has been af­fect­ed nonethe­less, by the ris­ing cost of do­ing busi­ness. So you’ll find the thin line be­tween the prices that cus­tomers are pay­ing and the prices that we are pay­ing for im­port­ing or for buy­ing lo­cal re­gard­less,” said Pan­tin, who ex­plained sup­ply chain is­sues cou­pled with bu­reau­cra­cy of­ten im­pact costs in­curred by both busi­ness­es and cus­tomers.

“When you have a ship­ment on the port stay­ing there for a very long time be­fore it gets in­to your ware­house. You’re los­ing mon­ey. It’s cost­ing more even though you would have paid one price if you can get in­to your busi­ness ear­ly, you save and that sav­ings can be passed on to cus­tomers. We don’t have that, the sys­tem is so bu­reau­crat­ic, and so much red tape right now that the cost of try­ing to do busi­ness is ex­treme­ly high and it is dri­ving up prices not just what’s go­ing on by the gas pump,” said Pan­tin who called for greater ef­fi­cien­cy to al­le­vi­ate these is­sues.

De­spite the chal­lenges, ahead of the open­ing of the sec­ond Ja­va lo­ca­tion, Pan­tin urged up-and-com­ing en­tre­pre­neurs to fol­low his ex­am­ple in terms of turn­ing hob­bies in­to busi­ness op­por­tu­ni­ties.

“Any­one who has some­thing that they en­joy do­ing for fun and it can be turned in­to a busi­ness should con­sid­er do­ing it. Be­cause that’s what I did with this. In fact, that’s what I did with mu­sic. That’s what I did with com­put­ers when I did com­put­ers be­fore. They should con­sid­er turn­ing it in­to a busi­ness. If you love what you do doesn’t feel like work,” he said.