It has not been the best year for the lo­cal restau­rant sec­tor, but two years af­ter form­ing part of the din­ing and nightlife re­vival at Val­park Shop­ping Plaza, a leap of faith is be­ing tak­en by two restau­rants that have opt­ed not to shrink, but to ex­pand.

Last week­end, both Nube Nueve and Flamin­gle held pri­vate events to cel­e­brate the open­ing of new lo­ca­tions for their brands.

Nube opened a new lo­ca­tion at Xtra Foods Plaza, South Park, San Fer­nan­do, while Flamin­gle Ex­press was wel­comed at Icon Plaza in Aranguez.

In both cas­es, the own­ers were ap­proached by the de­vel­op­ers of their new lo­ca­tions to bring the restau­rants in­to these new­ly con­struct­ed plazas.

“When we opened Nube in Val­park two years ago, Xtra Foods’ own­er was com­ing all the time. He said, ‘We have a place in South for you.’ Off the bat, I said yes—we want it—with­out know­ing any­thing about the lo­ca­tion, and that is how it start­ed. But ex­e­cu­tion re­al­ly be­gan about six to eight months ago with con­struc­tion,” Arvin­der Ram­per­sad ex­plained at the pri­vate event to com­mem­o­rate the open­ing of the new lo­ca­tion.

Nicholas Sinanans­ingh and Ashana Gibran, the cou­ple be­hind Flamin­gle Café, found them­selves on a sim­i­lar time­line when the op­por­tu­ni­ty to be­come one of the first ten­ants at Icon Plaza was pre­sent­ed.

Sinanans­ingh said that while plans for the new lo­ca­tion had been in place for some time, the team had been wait­ing for the de­vel­op­ment to open.

“We worked to­geth­er with the mall. The mall was be­ing built at the same time. We were wait­ing for it to fin­ish, then we got start­ed. It has been a six- to sev­en-month process, so right now we are just ex­cit­ed to open ful­ly and get the ball rolling,” he said.

How­ev­er, Gibran was wary of the chal­leng­ing busi­ness cli­mate and com­pe­ti­tion in the restau­rant in­dus­try, which added to the anx­i­ety sur­round­ing the brand’s ex­pan­sion.

Nev­er­the­less, the cou­ple ul­ti­mate­ly felt the op­por­tu­ni­ty should not be ig­nored.

“This ex­pan­sion comes a year and a half af­ter open­ing the first Flamin­gle. When we looked at it, Icon Plaza was seek­ing new ten­ants and was ready to open, and we thought it would be a good op­por­tu­ni­ty to pur­sue. If you miss it, it could take an­oth­er cou­ple of years be­fore an op­por­tu­ni­ty like this comes back,” Gibran said, adding that tak­ing risks was nec­es­sary in busi­ness de­vel­op­ment.

“There is so much hap­pen­ing in the world, right here in the Caribbean, and it’s some­thing we had to con­sid­er. But I said this is what busi­ness peo­ple do—you take a chance, you take a risk. We have sup­port, so let’s try it. If it works, it will be great,” she added.

The Flamin­gle team fur­ther ex­plained that they had fa­mil­iar­i­ty with the Aranguez com­mu­ni­ty and had been asked if they could bring a ver­sion of the café to the area.

Icon Plaza’s call came at the right time to meet that de­mand.

“Nicholas and I are both ac­cus­tomed to Aranguez—it’s like a home­town. First and fore­most, we are café-based and com­mu­ni­ty-dri­ven. We de­cid­ed to take the chance and ex­pand si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly,” Gibran said.

Both busi­ness­es ad­mit­ted it was a chal­leng­ing time to op­er­ate a restau­rant, es­pe­cial­ly fol­low­ing in­creas­es in al­co­hol du­ties and oth­er fac­tors im­pact­ing the in­dus­try, which have led to some clo­sures. How­ev­er, they both felt that main­tain­ing qual­i­ty stan­dards was the on­ly way to nav­i­gate such a pe­ri­od, while al­so re­main­ing grate­ful for sup­port­ive sup­pli­ers and a loy­al client base.

“In terms of the high cost of al­co­hol, Trinidad is a very so­cial cul­ture. As a busi­ness per­son, you need to adapt to the times—it’s ei­ther adapt or dis­ap­pear. Our ap­proach is to adapt while still pro­vid­ing qual­i­ty for our cus­tomers. Qual­i­ty is what keeps peo­ple com­ing back. So even if it’s $10 or $20 more for a drink, if it’s qual­i­ty, they will ap­pre­ci­ate it and con­tin­ue to sup­port,” Ram­per­sad said when asked about bal­anc­ing in­creased costs brought on by tax­es.

He ex­plained that his busi­ness did not re­ly heav­i­ly on for­eign ex­change, as most sup­pli­ers and restau­rant equip­ment were sourced lo­cal­ly.

“We use lo­cal sup­pli­ers for every­thing, so for­eign ex­change does not af­fect us as much, be­cause we have many restau­rant equip­ment com­pa­nies in Trinidad,” Ram­per­sad said. He al­so cred­it­ed the sup­port of sev­er­al lo­cal busi­ness­es in the de­vel­op­ment of the new lo­ca­tion, which, like its Val­park coun­ter­part, fea­tures a large din­ing area and a deck that he dubbed the “lim­ing area”, which ac­com­mo­dates both din­ing and danc­ing.

The South Park ver­sion of the deck is larg­er than its north­ern coun­ter­part and in­cludes large screens, as Ram­per­sad hint­ed at host­ing view­ing events for the up­com­ing UE­FA Cham­pi­ons League fi­nals and the FI­FA World Cup.

Ram­per­sad said he chose the area af­ter recog­nis­ing that there were lim­it­ed restau­rant op­tions in South and Cen­tral Trinidad.

“For ex­am­ple, we are in Val­park, which has about eight oth­er places where you can dine and drink. If you re­al­ly count the num­ber of restau­rants in Trinidad, it is prob­a­bly less than 20 in cer­tain ar­eas. In North Trinidad, we have over 100 restau­rants, if you analyse it,” he said. “So in the South, the op­tions are more lim­it­ed—but that does not mean the mar­ket is small­er. There are many peo­ple in the South look­ing for good food, a good din­ing ex­pe­ri­ence, and a good lim­ing ex­pe­ri­ence. We are sim­ply look­ing to add to that.”

The Flamin­gle team, how­ev­er, of­fered a slight­ly dif­fer­ent take on their brand at Icon Plaza, with Flamin­gle Ex­press fea­tur­ing an on-the-go buf­fet for cus­tomers.

“So Flamin­gle Ex­press is re­al­ly a mid­dle ground be­tween what we start­ed with and what we have at Val­park. We split the con­cept in two. There are many busi­ness­es in the area, so we felt peo­ple would want quick­er food op­tions rather than just an à la carte menu. That’s where the Ex­press buf­fet comes in,” Gibran ex­plained.

How­ev­er, the Aranguez lo­ca­tion al­so fea­tures a larg­er cock­tail bar than its Val­park coun­ter­part, aim­ing to at­tract not on­ly on-the-go work­ers but al­so the af­ter-work crowd.

Sinanans­ingh said the brand would ex­per­i­ment with var­i­ous so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties to draw cus­tomers to the new lo­ca­tion.

The two restau­rant own­ers, how­ev­er, dif­fered on fu­ture ex­pan­sion. Ram­per­sad said he does not plan fur­ther ex­pan­sion in the near term, while Sinanans­ingh re­vealed that plans are al­ready in mo­tion for an­oth­er ven­ture—though not a Flamin­gle restau­rant—in St Au­gus­tine.