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Saturday, May 24, 2025

Trinidad and Tobago's Cocoa Guru

by

20111112

Nes­tled in the heart of San­ta Cruz is a co­coa work­shop. It's where Astri­da Saun­ders, (a 43 year old moth­er of two) works on week­ends and nights as­sid­u­ous­ly churn­ing out hun­dreds of packs of co­coa (for drink­ing), co­coa liqueurs and co­coa but­ter un­der her brand, Ex­ot­ic Caribbean. A Tamana na­tive and self pro­claimed "coun­try girl", Astri­da was born to a moth­er who was teacher and a fa­ther who worked as a po­lice­man. To­geth­er, they owned an agri­cul­tur­al es­tate where they worked part-time many moons ago, with the main fruit be­ing co­coa. Astri­da de­cid­ed to fol­low in the fam­i­ly tra­di­tion of agri­cul­ture when she de­cid­ed to pur­sue her de­gree in Agri­cul­tur­al Man­age­ment at the Unit­ed World Col­lege in Venezuela. There­fore it was no sur­prise that three years ago she de­cid­ed to get in­to the co­coa busi­ness once again as a means of oc­cu­py­ing her time as her chil­dren got old­er. For­tu­nate­ly for this "co­coa-con­nois­seur" her one-time hob­by has turned in­to a bur­geon­ing cot­tage in­dus­try.

"Co­coa has al­ways been in the fam­i­ly," Astri­da ex­plained, "but I must say that it was Bar­ry Joelfield (who was once the man­ag­er of the Co­coa Board) who gave me the in­spi­ra­tion when he said the val­ue of the co­coa is in the bean. I then de­cid­ed to make drink­ing choco­late but I did not have a clue about how to do it." In­spired by her new idea, she de­cid­ed to take a trip to the coun­try­side to learn the process of mak­ing tra­di­tion­al drink­ing choco­late. "In the coun­try­side peo­ple grew up on co­coa tea so they had the se­cret on how to make it. I re­al­ly tapped in­to the knowl­edge of the old­er gen­er­a­tion," she said. Soon there­after, Astri­da and her broth­ers show­cased their co­coa-mak­ing skills at a fes­ti­val host­ed by the Min­istry of Tourism where peo­ple be­gan to ask about ac­tu­al­ly buy­ing the prod­uct. "I re­alised that there was a de­mand for it, so I de­cid­ed to pro­duce it for sale."

As with any small busi­ness, Astri­da be­gan to make the drink­ing choco­late on a small scale in her home kitchen us­ing the beans from her par­ents' co­coa es­tate. She dis­trib­uted them to near­by plant nurs­eries and sou­venir shops where the re­sponse was phe­nom­e­nal. Soon na­tion­wide su­per­mar­kets jumped on board. "I felt if these large su­per­mar­kets sold them, I could not do it in my small kitchen, so I de­cid­ed to ren­o­vate my home and in­vest in some ma­chines with the mon­ey I made from sell­ing the choco­late," Astri­da said. At that time, dis­tri­b­u­tion ex­pand­ed to the air­port and To­ba­go. Ever the in­no­va­tor, she then de­cid­ed to di­ver­si­fy the flavours us­ing or­ange peel, gin­ger, mint, lemon­grass and chilli, not­ing, "The flavours I chose are the typ­i­cal flavours you would get in the coun­try­side and I de­cid­ed to in­fuse them in the choco­late."

Al­ways am­bi­tious, Astri­da de­cid­ed to ex­pand her prod­uct line once again in­to a spe­cial­ly made co­coa liqueur. "Be­cause of the pos­i­tive feed­back, I said that I want­ed to stay with­in co­coa in­dus­try. When I was grow­ing up, peo­ple al­ways made home­made wines and liqueurs, so I drew from my child­hood ex­pe­ri­ences." Astri­da worked with CARIRI and UWI to de­vel­op the liqueur which has been a run­away hit since she be­gan to pro­duce it. "I taste-test­ed it on friends and then gave out sam­ples at World Food Day. The re­sponse was just great."

En­cour­aged by the pos­i­tive feed­back, Astri­da show­cased her prod­uct at the Taste T&T Culi­nary Fes­ti­val; it was sold out in record time. She al­so makes co­coa but­ter on a small scale by re­quest. Al­though mak­ing the prod­ucts takes hard work, the co­coa gu­ru ad­mits that it's quite ther­a­peu­tic and helps to keep her mind go­ing. Over­all, her prod­ucts have had a glob­al reach as she has show­cased them at the Fan­cy Food Fes­ti­val in Wash­ing­ton and she is due to leave short­ly to show­case at the Food and Bev­er­age Fes­ti­val in Mi­a­mi. Her co­coa prod­ucts have al­so been fea­tured at the Nat­ur­al His­to­ry Mu­se­um in Lon­don.

In just three years, Astri­da's suc­cess has ex­ceed­ed all imag­in­able ex­pec­ta­tions. For her brand Ex­ot­ic Caribbean, this is on­ly the be­gin­ning of great things to come. "I would like with­in the next 5 years to have my prod­ucts mar­ket­ed com­mer­cial­ly and al­so ex­port­ed. I would al­so like to have my own tra­di­tion­al choco­late shop," she says hope­ful­ly. "I am al­ways work­ing to­wards growth and I want to re­tire do­ing this. I want to be Astri­da Saun­ders – some­one who did some­thing for co­coa in Trinidad and To­ba­go."


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