Car­ol Quash

An­nie Phillip is a full-time florist by pro­fes­sion, and an on-the-job trainee at Flavours by Di­a­mond’s Cre­ative Hands; her own small busi­ness that pro­duces pep­per sauces and de­hy­drat­ed spices.

She told Busi­ness Guardian when she first start­ed a few years ago, it was more of an in­spi­ra­tion and tri­al-and-er­ror process than any­thing else. Now, she is at a point where she is learn­ing the sci­ence and safe­ty as­pects be­hind the pep­per-sauce mak­ing process, and get­ting the for­mal train­ing she needs to turn her ini­tia­tive in­to a suc­cess­ful busi­ness.

“Pep­per sauce is some­thing I didn’t re­al­ly know about, so what­ev­er I made was by in­spi­ra­tion. If a co-work­er gave me a man­go, I would come home and try a man­go pep­per sauce and give out sam­ples…Even­tu­al­ly I start­ed try­ing pineap­ple and ap­ple sauces, and put them in jars to see how long they would stay.”

She has since added a num­ber of fruit-flavoured sauces to her range of prod­ucts.

Phillip re­cent­ly com­plet­ed a two-day pep­per sauce mak­ing course of­fered by the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and Fish­eries that fo­cussed heav­i­ly on the sci­ence be­hind pep­per sauces and food safe­ty pro­ce­dures dur­ing pro­duc­tion. She is cur­rent­ly do­ing the three-month Busi­ness Hatch­ery Pro­gramme of­fered by the Caribbean In­dus­tri­al Re­search In­sti­tute that teach­es small busi­ness own­ers how to val­i­date their busi­ness­es, re­fine their busi­ness plans and mar­ket their prod­ucts.

“I have ac­tu­al­ly learned a lot of things that I didn’t even imag­ine when I start­ed this busi­ness, such as man­ag­ing PH lev­els, avoid­ing con­t­a­m­i­na­tion and spoilage, mar­ket­ing my prod­ucts, busi­ness strate­gies, how to price, how I can avoid wastage, keep­ing track of my prod­uct price.”

She said the hatch­ery al­so has a so­cial me­dia seg­ment that teach­es par­tic­i­pants how to make videos for mar­ket­ing their prod­ucts on so­cial me­dia.

“But I al­so do word-of-mouth mar­ket­ing. When I go any­where, I tell peo­ple about it. I may not walk with the prod­uct, but I will ex­plain to them what the prod­uct is.”

Phillip ad­mit­ted that be­fore she got in­to the the­o­ry of busi­ness, she used to just sell to who­ev­er or­dered a bot­tle, with­out keep­ing track of her ex­pen­di­ture and rev­enue. Now she is be­ing in­tro­duced to spread­sheets where she can track how much she spends and makes from her sales.

“I have start­ed im­ple­ment­ing what I learned in my busi­ness and I’m see­ing the dif­fer­ence.

Be­fore I start­ed do­ing it last year, I was just sell­ing ran­dom­ly and was nev­er re­al­ly keep­ing track. Now, by keep­ing track of every­thing, and doc­u­ment­ing every­thing, I am see­ing that it is prof­itable.”

And she has learned first-hand the im­por­tance of keep­ing per­son­al as­sets and busi­ness as­sets sep­a­rate­ly.

“I know what hap­pens when you mix your busi­ness mon­ey and your per­son­al mon­ey; that it be­comes a big is­sue. So I have my pep­per sauce mon­ey sep­a­rate, and I have my de­hy­drat­ed pi­men­tos mon­ey sep­a­rate.”

Her sell­ing point is cen­tred around the taste of her prod­ucts, which she doc­u­ments step by step when mak­ing them to main­tain con­sis­ten­cy. Part of her rou­tine for every new prod­uct, she said, is giv­ing out sam­ples.

“I just love it when peo­ple say, ‘Hey, this thing tastes so good.’”

The En­ter­prise res­i­dent said she even used to sell her prod­ucts in To­ba­go, but was forced to stop when she had to un­der­go surgery.

“And last year, I de­cid­ed to bring my busi­ness back to life. While I was home re­cov­er­ing, I was think­ing, ‘I need to do some­thing. I need to do a side-line job, so I start­ed back mak­ing my sauces.”

She said she hasn’t been push­ing the de­hy­drat­ed pi­men­tos as­pect of the busi­ness that much, and sells that main­ly to peo­ple who know she does it and asks for it. But she keeps it ac­tive.

“Last week­end, UP­ick had a lot of ripe pep­pers on their trees, and as it was al­most Cor­pus Christi, they want­ed to up­root all the trees to re­plant, so I got like 20 pounds for $100,” which she will de­hy­drate and pack­age.

She said a while back she had done a course in de­hy­drat­ing spices and fruits, and found out that de­hy­drat­ed spices were in high de­mand on the lo­cal mar­ket. She im­port­ed a de­hy­dra­tor and tried de­hy­drat­ing pi­men­tos.

“It came out re­al­ly nice. But now I re­alise I was un­der­selling my­self be­cause I was new to it.”

Go­ing for­ward, she said, she will be try­ing to get all her prod­ucts on su­per­mar­ket shelves.

“I’ve al­ready talked to some of these su­per­mar­ket man­agers and they told me to bring some sam­ples.”

And even as she pre­pares to get her ex­ist­ing prod­ucts in­to the hands of as many cus­tomers as she can, she is al­ready think­ing of the next new taste that will at­tract pep­per sauce lovers.

“I want to make a co­conut pep­per sauce, and I’m try­ing to fig­ure out what spices I can add that can go hand in hand with the co­conut taste, with­out over­pow­er­ing it.”