Tremaine So­ca Warn­er

Glob­al fast food restau­rant chains boast mil­lions in an­nu­al prof­its, good cus­tomer ser­vice, qual­i­ty prod­uct and su­per-se­cret recipes. Many such com­pa­nies have es­tab­lished suc­cess­ful fran­chis­es in T&T of­fer­ing nu­mer­ous burg­er, piz­za and fried chick­en op­tions for lo­cals to get their fast food fix.

In 1968, Roy­al Cas­tle opened in T&T and es­tab­lished it­self as a lo­cal­ly-owned fried chick­en com­pa­ny with lo­cal in­gre­di­ents and lo­cal taste. It re­mained the on­ly ma­jor lo­cal fried chick­en es­tab­lish­ment, un­til the word spread about a San­gre Grande-based restau­rant called Japs Fried Chick­en. With most­ly word of mouth ad­ver­tis­ing, Japs quick­ly picked up mo­men­tum and now has eight out­lets in Trinidad. But where did it all start for Japs Fried Chick­en?

The T&T Guardian vis­it­ed Japs' head of­fice in Coalmine, San­gre Grande and spoke to its man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Dar­ryl Ma­habir.

Ma­habir said his moth­er Bhag­wa­tee Maraj was in­volved in the restau­rant busi­ness since 1990 with a small din­er and bar called Bago's Kitchen. The restau­rant was lo­cat­ed at the cor­ner of Fos­ter Road and Brier­ly Street and served every­thing from fried chick­en to cre­ole and East In­di­an cui­sine. In 2000, Ma­habir said Bago's Kitchen was fac­ing fi­nan­cial dif­fi­cul­ties and he stepped in to take over the busi­ness. At the time there were no stan­dard recipes forany of the home­style meals. He said this was the first weak­ness he saw in the busi­ness since the taste of meals was in­con­sis­tent. He spent years work­ing on the fried chick­en recipe and it is on­ly re­cent­ly he achieved the stan­dard­ised taste he was look­ing for.

"We now own every­thing in the recipe," he said. "We used to pur­chase dif­fer­ent parts of the recipe from peo­ple but now we own the en­tire thing so with­in the last six months we were able to stan­dard­ise every part of the process and every step of the recipe." Apart from Japs' se­cret recipe, the com­pa­ny has al­so de­cid­ed to with­hold the name of the "par­tic­u­lar in­di­vid­ual" who Ma­habir brought in­to the kitchen to help in fi­nal­is­ing it. He said the woman's name would re­main a Japs trade se­cret.

In 2007, Bago's Kitchen was forced to shut down be­cause it was not li­cenced to sell both food and liquor. Short­ly af­ter, Ma­habir de­cid­ed to close the bar and fo­cus on­ly on the restau­rant. In that same year, he reg­is­tered the restau­rant's name– Japs Fried Chick­en. He said Japs was a fam­i­ly nick­name giv­en to him­self, his broth­ers, his step­fa­ther and even his moth­er who be­came known as Madame Japs. The first two restau­rants were both lo­cat­ed in San­gre Grande–the first at the lo­ca­tion of Bago's Kitchen and the sec­ond on An­dre Street on the East­ern Main Road. Since then, out­lets have opened in Va­len­cia, Rio Claro, St He­le­na, San Juan, St James and Ari­ma. He said the San­gre Grande and Ari­ma branch­es are the most suc­cess­ful. Japs has opened a new branch every year since 2007 with the ex­cep­tion of 2011. Ma­habir said he used that year to stan­dard­ise op­er­a­tions and to de­vel­op poli­cies and pro­ce­dures to man­age the large num­ber of em­ploy­ees.

Ma­habir con­stant­ly re­ceives re­quests from cus­tomers urg­ing him to open branch­es in oth­er parts of the coun­try. This year, he is try­ing to choose from three po­ten­tial branch lo­ca­tions in Port-of-Spain, San Fer­nan­do and To­ba­go. Japs has start­ed a de­liv­ery ser­vice at its Fos­ter Road, San­gre Grande out­let as well as the one in San Juan. He hopes to ex­pand the de­liv­ery ser­vice to all branch­es. Its on­ly fran­chise is a mo­bile unit which was fran­chised to lo­cal foot­baller Brent San­cho in 2011.

When the Japs buzz first be­gan, the restau­rant spe­cialised in fried chick­en and fries with gar­lic sauce as a side. Now around six years lat­er, many ad­di­tions have been made to the Japs menu in­clud­ing fried fish, shrimp, pota­to wedges, chick­en nuggets, sal­ads, ve­g­an burg­ers and chick­en sand­wich­es. With its tagline, "de best taste around", Ma­habir said apart from its fries, Japs us­es all lo­cal ma­te­ri­als in its meals and makes its own condi­ments and sea­son­ing. The com­pa­ny's lo­go, which was de­signed in 2005 by An­nie Ram­jat­tan, is an an­i­mat­ed im­age of Ma­habir.

Asked about Japs' size of op­er­a­tion, he said there are around 20 staff mem­bers in each of the eight out­lets. Since he took over in 2000, he has been re­fin­ing and de­vel­op­ing Japs' busi­ness mod­el.

"Be­fore peo­ple would have thought that I was Japs and I did every­thing, but from 2007 to present I just over­see the op­er­a­tions. So it has gone from be­ing a sole pro­pri­etor to be­ing a lim­it­ed li­a­bil­i­ty com­pa­ny del­e­gat­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to dif­fer­ent de­part­ments."

In re­cent years, small fried chick­en com­pa­nies have opened up through­out T&T at­tract­ing long lines of peo­ple seek­ing a quick meal. While these new restau­rants of­fer com­pet­i­tive prices, Ma­habir said they can­not com­pete with Japs when it comes to stan­dards of op­er­a­tion and qual­i­ty.

He said: "Lo­cal busi­ness own­ers seem to have got­ten more brave now to come up against in­ter­na­tion­al ri­vals like KFC, Church's Chick­en and Popeyes. Some of these new busi­ness­es may even have tak­en some point­ers from what we (Japs) have done in terms of pric­ing, de­liv­er­ing qual­i­ty prod­uct and look­ing for a cer­tain taste." He said Japs of­fered the health­i­est fried chick­en op­tion in Trinidad since all its meat is cleaned and pre­pared to en­sure that there is a min­i­mal amount of fat and oil.

Speak­ing about Japs' ex­pan­sion prospects, Ma­habir said he hopes to see Japs out­lets in oth­er Caribbean is­lands but he is cur­rent­ly fo­cused on main­tain­ing the high­est pos­si­ble stan­dard of op­er­a­tions in T&T.

For now, he says, Japs Fried Chick­en is still in its "in­cu­ba­tor phase" and he will not con­sid­er it to be a suc­cess sto­ry un­til the busi­ness has reached its 10-year mark and con­tin­ues to thrive.

What is the se­cret to the suc­cess of a fast food chain?

The T&T Guardian al­so spoke to mar­ket­ing strate­gist and man­ag­ing di­rec­tor at Pep­per Ad­ver­tis­ing Den­nis Ramdeen who ex­plained some of the se­crets to the suc­cess of a fast food chain. Among them, he said was the qual­i­ty of the food and whether or not the phys­i­cal prod­uct met the ex­pec­ta­tions of the cus­tomer. An­oth­er ma­jor fac­tor, is the cus­tomer ex­pe­ri­ence which he said de­pend­ed on a num­ber of ques­tions in­clud­ing: Did the cashier get the cus­tomer's or­der right? Was the out­let clean? Was the cashier pleas­ant? He said the fi­nal fac­tor was val­ue which ex­am­ines the re­la­tion­ship be­tween ben­e­fits and price.

"Based on what the cus­tomer gets and what the cus­tomer pays," he said, "do they feel like they have got­ten good val­ue for mon­ey? If you pay for a sand­wich and when you open it you see a very tiny piece of chick­en, you might feel cheat­ed." All three fac­tors, he said, would de­ter­mine "cus­tomer loy­al­ty".

He al­so said in or­der to com­pete with large, es­tab­lished busi­ness­es, new­er busi­ness­es need­ed to "own a clear po­si­tion in the minds and hearts of cus­tomers".

In the same way that the Walt Dis­ney World brand will for­ev­er be as­so­ci­at­ed with en­chant­ment, Ramdeen said each brand must seek to own one trade­mark el­e­ment. He said in find­ing this, brands should ask two ques­tions: What do our cus­tomers de­sire? What can my brand give cus­tomers bet­ter than any oth­er brand could?

Oth­er than busi­ness longevi­ty, Ramdeen said a fast food busi­ness can mea­sure suc­cess by mon­i­tor­ing its or­gan­ic sales growth.

"That means, are sales of ex­ist­ing stores grow­ing year­ly? If your in­creas­es are on­ly com­ing from new store builds then that may in­di­cate that you have a prob­lem rather than a suc­cess."

Out­lets opened

2007–San­gre Grande

2008–Va­len­cia and Rio Claro

2009–St He­le­na

2010–San Juan

2011–No branch opened

2012–St James and Ari­ma

Thomas' claim

In a T&T Guardian ar­ti­cle from March 2011, Nicholas Thomas (Ma­habir's step­fa­ther of four years) dis­missed claims that Ma­habir and his moth­er in­vent­ed the Japs recipe for fried chick­en. Thomas said he de­vel­oped the recipe in 1979 when the first Jap's Fast Food out­let was opened. The sto­ry said Thomas' lawyer had is­sued two pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ters to Ma­habir and his moth­er to stop the use of the name Japs Fried Chick­en. In his in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, Ma­habir said there was nev­er a court bat­tle over the mat­ter and there would soon be a hear­ing at the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs in re­la­tion to the Japs trade­mark is­sue.