SAN­DRA L BLOOD

blood­san­dral@ya­hoo.com

“To­geth­er with our cus­tomers, we sur­vived it all—1936-1945, we wit­nessed and sur­vived wartimes with bread short­ages; 1970, the Black Pow­er up­heaval; 1986, a re­ces­sion; 1990, the at­tempt­ed coup; 2008, an­oth­er re­ces­sion; and 2020 to present COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. To­geth­er, we will sur­vive this one too.

“We are hap­py that we can still bring some mea­sure of joy to your house­holds. Our brand mes­sage, Fresh Bread Dai­ly, sees us re­main­ing a house­hold name be­cause of our re­li­a­bil­i­ty, qual­i­ty and great taste.”

That was a state­ment from the man­age­ment of Chee Mooke’s Bak­ery which is this year, cel­e­brat­ing 90 years in busi­ness.

It all start­ed in the 1920s, when Arthur Alexan­der Phillips, then in his 30s and pop­u­lar­ly known as Pa Alec, gave up his job as an ex­pe­ri­enced ta­ble hand with a big Port-of-Spain bak­ery to start his own busi­ness, bak­ing bread and de­liv­er­ing it around town in a hand-drawn cart.

Around that time, he met and mar­ried young Daphene Cha Cha, known as Ma­ma D, who quick­ly learned bak­ing skills and be­gan as­sist­ing at their bak­ery lo­cat­ed on St Joseph Road, Port-of-Spain.

In the 1930s, when Colum­bus Bak­ery, lo­cat­ed at 14 Ma­rine Square (now In­de­pen­dence Square), was put up for sale, Pa Alec sold a par­cel of land where the Hilton Ho­tel and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre now stands to make the pur­chase. But some­time af­ter that he be­came ill and died.

Chee Mooke Bakery’s current management team: From left Stokely, Simone, Natalie and Joan Phillips and accountant Richie Roach.

Ma­ma D then took on the task of run­ning the busi­ness and rais­ing five chil­dren: Agnes, Do­ri­an and Ivan, Enid and Leon “Taf­fari.”

She lat­er met and mar­ried Boysie Chee Mooke, of Mor­vant, who got in­volved in the busi­ness.

The late Robert was born of that mar­riage. Dur­ing the 1940s, the cou­ple de­vel­oped a prin­ci­ple of shar­ing and con­nect­ed­ness, with and be­yond East Port-of-Spain. The bak­ery was even­tu­al­ly re­named Chee Mooke’s Bak­ery and al­most be­came a cen­tre of com­mu­ni­ty life where peo­ple would come to get their baked goods. There was a time when Ma­ma D oc­ca­sion­al­ly of­fered vis­i­tors a cut­ter—a small por­tion of food with fresh juice or whiskey.

She had a keen busi­ness sense. To ex­pand ser­vice and sales, she in­clud­ed roti. Re­al­is­ing that ed­u­ca­tion was vi­tal, she saved, en­cour­aged, and en­sured her chil­dren a good, sound ed­u­ca­tion. That bore fruit in the fol­low­ing decades, when Boysie be­gan fo­cus­ing on his own busi­ness in Mor­vant and daugh­ter Agnes got in­volved in op­er­at­ing the bak­ery in part­ner­ship with Ma­ma D. The oth­er chil­dren made their way in the world but al­so con­tributed to the busi­ness.

Street­wise Do­ri­an was the dri­ver, Ivan be­came a ce­re­al chemist in Cana­da and Enid worked as a nurse in Eng­land. Taf­fari qual­i­fied as a bio­chemist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of British Co­lum­bia in Cana­da and Robert served as a deputy may­or of Port-of-Spain.

Their com­bined ef­forts con­tributed to the growth and suc­cess of Chee Mooke’s from the 1970s to 2007. They al­so evolved from word-of-mouth ad­ver­tis­ing to a pop­u­lar jin­gle. Ra­dio and tele­vi­sion ad­ver­tise­ments fol­lowed and pro­duc­tion in­creased with new cus­tomers be­yond the East-West cor­ri­dor.

When Ma­ma D stepped away from ac­tive in­volve­ment in the busi­ness in her 70s, her son Taf­fari and daugh­ter-in-law Joan took.

The newly-named Chee Mooke’s Bakery in the 1930s.

A fourth gen­er­a­tion of the fam­i­ly is now in charge and op­er­a­tions have been mod­ernised at the bak­ery’s orig­i­nal lo­ca­tion in Port-of-Spain. Apart from walk-in cus­tomers, oth­er ser­vices in­clude: whole­sale, de­liv­ery to reg­u­lar cus­tomers, pre­mi­um bread­crumbs (whole­sale and re­tail), bak­ing for cus­tomers, and cater­ing.

Un­der the aus­pices of the North­ern Re­gion of Pan Trin­ba­go, Chee Mooke’s Bak­ery host­ed a one-month cus­tomer and cul­ture ap­pre­ci­a­tion from Au­gust 27 to Sep­tem­ber 17, part of Di­ver­si­ty Month with live en­ter­tain­ment every Fri­day, where fresh­ly-baked hops were some­times dis­trib­uted.

Fea­tured per­form­ers were: Uni Stars’ Ka­reem and Avis Bruce-Brown, Road Block’s De­ja and De­jean Cain, High­landers’ Shaquille Gaskin; Adele and Rudolph Tay­lor, and Mar­cus Glas­gow and Rose­ford Coutain from reign­ing Panora­ma Champs Des­per­a­does.