CHARLES KONG SOO

Bread is known as the "staff of life" and has been a vi­tal food source for peo­ple for thou­sands of years around the world. Bread is more than just food. The term a per­son’s "bread and but­ter" means his or her main source of in­come, while bread or dough is the slang for mon­ey. When peo­ple "break bread" they share more than just a meal; they come to­geth­er in body as well as spir­it.

The Ben­jamin fam­i­ly from San­gre Grande has been mak­ing bread for more than a cen­tu­ry. Ben­ji's Bak­ery, at Guaico Tamana Road, is an icon and in­sti­tu­tion serv­ing the com­mu­ni­ty for that time.

The bak­ery's de­li­cious co­conut turnovers, cur­rant rolls, pone, and gar­lic bread fin­ish ear­ly. Its pas­tries go back with Trinidad ex­pats and tourists alike to Eng­land, New York, Cana­da, Mi­a­mi and oth­er parts of the world. Cus­tomers in the East boast that the best hot cross buns can be found at Ben­ji's.

For mem­bers of the fam­i­ly, bread has been their staff of life, pro­vid­ing them with their liveli­hood, pro­fes­sion, pas­sion, the means to raise their fam­i­lies and to ed­u­cate their chil­dren.

With the hum­ble loaf of bread, the Ben­jamins have been able to give back to the com­mu­ni­ty, help­ing res­i­dents of San­gre Grande and en­vi­rons in their time of need, per­form­ing char­i­ta­ble works, and spon­sor­ing com­mu­ni­ty groups.

While many busi­ness em­pires rarely make it to the third gen­er­a­tion with­out im­plod­ing, to reach five gen­er­a­tions by any stan­dards is wor­thy of com­men­da­tion to any or­gan­i­sa­tion in this high­ly com­pet­i­tive so­ci­ety. Many such en­ter­pris­es have sprung up, flour­ished for a while and then van­ished in­to obliv­ion.

This was not the case of the Guaico bak­ery which was found­ed by a young Scot­tish man, William Ben­jamin who mi­grat­ed to Trinidad from Guyana and worked for a short while as an as­sis­tant chemist, termed a pan boil­er at Ca­roni Sug­ar Es­tates.

The bak­ery sup­plied "one cent" and "pen­ny loaf" dur­ing the ear­ly part and mid­dle twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.

Be­cause of the price, hops bread was orig­i­nal­ly known as "pen­ny loaves" and was af­ford­able to many.

In its ini­tial stages, the bak­ery sup­plied its prod­ucts to Guaico, San­gre Grande and its im­me­di­ate sur­round­ings, but ex­pand­ed its sales to oth­er vil­lages con­vey­ing its sup­plies to con­sumers by foot, an­i­mal-drawn car­riages, bi­cy­cles and cars, to the cus­tom-built de­liv­ery vans that they now use.

Busi­ness run by fourth and fifth gen­er­a­tions

To­day, the bak­ery is very much alive and run by the fourth and fifth-gen­er­a­tion chil­dren of the ma­tri­arch of the fam­i­ly, An­cil­la and her hus­band, the late Ken­neth Ben­jamin.

At one time all eight chil­dren worked in the bak­ery. Trevor, the el­dest, who was the man­ag­ing di­rec­tor, un­for­tu­nate­ly, passed away on Feb­ru­ary 7. In­grid is the op­er­a­tions man­ag­er, Ronald aka Andy is the pro­duc­tion man­ag­er, Derek does de­liv­er­ies, Mona, Su­san and Jan­ice live abroad, and Wayne fol­lowed his own path.

Kris­tel, Andy's daugh­ter, a fifth-gen­er­a­tion Ben­jamin, is work­ing to help pre­serve the fam­i­ly tra­di­tion. Day­lene, Derek's daugh­ter, who is part of that gen­er­a­tion, is still in school but helps out in the bak­ery on Sun­days.

An­cil­la Ben­jamin, 82, said "When I was 16, I used to come and see my fu­ture moth­er-in-law, Vir­ginia (Ms Sim) Ben­jamin at the bak­ery's present lo­ca­tion, that was in 1953 and I went back and forth to Coalmine.

"It was a mod­est house in front, not very big, the bak­ery was at the back on one lot of land. In those days we used wood for the brick oven. Trucks used to come in and bring in wood, then you had to light the fire and tend it.

"We had no show­case or pal­let then, at the time, we sold whole­sale. A fam­i­ly who op­er­at­ed a par­lour next to the bak­ery bought the bread and resold it. If you want­ed a sin­gle bread you had to go to the par­lour.

"While Ken­neth and his broth­er Carl were still go­ing to school, they de­liv­ered bread on bi­cy­cles to Tamana, Nestor Vil­lage, Va­len­cia, in and around San­gre Grande, To­co, and Man­zanil­la."

She said when the boys' fa­ther, Don­ald Ben­jamin died, they had to stop school and help their moth­er, Vir­ginia, with the bak­ery.

She said dur­ing this pe­ri­od, the bak­ery was rent­ed out to Bas­deo Sinanan, the fa­ther of Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan un­til the boys came of age.

Ben­jamin said Ken­neth, who al­so worked at Red Store in San­gre Grande, at the young age of 15 for a salary of $3.50 per week to help his moth­er and broth­er, con­vinced the pro­pri­etress to give him a bi­cy­cle—he would lat­er use this to sell the items which they baked.

In­tro­duc­ing tech­nol­o­gy and ad­vanc­ing

Ben­jamin said when she be­gan work­ing in the bak­ery, they made bis­cuit cakes, rain­bow cakes, flan­nel pan, "Ba­jan" which was a square-shaped drops, hops bread sold for a pen­ny, 12 cents a quart and loaves were six cents.

She said back then on­ly men used to do the work mix­ing flour by hand, some­times mix­ing 300 pounds of dough for hops. Her hus­band would mix dough for the long bread while she mixed sweet bread bat­ter or buns.

She and her daugh­ters Mona and Su­san used to get up at 3:30 am to grate 140 pounds of cas­sa­va and co­conuts by hand to make pone. It was a te­dious process where she re­called that they would of­ten skin their fin­gers and knuck­les. She said at the time, she was a seam­stress and taught em­broi­dery in the com­mu­ni­ty but had to give that up to de­vote more time to the bak­ery.

She said when par­lours bought bread from the es­tab­lish­ment, they re­ceived a bak­er's dozen (13) or a quart in­stead of the stan­dard dozen.

Ben­jamin said in those days peo­ple walked with their own cloth bags to put their bread in as pa­per or plas­tic bags were not preva­lent then. Ben­jamin said her moth­er-in-law emp­tied rice bags from the shop or gro­cery to re­sell to cus­tomers.

She said she de­cid­ed to buy pa­per bags in­stead from Mar­lay's Gen­er­al Store at a pen­ny a bag, but she didn't charge cus­tomers. Ben­jamin said they bought sug­ar from a Chi­nese shop­keep­er, Tankan, while trucks de­liv­ered bags of flour from Mar­lay, where they would some­times get "trou­ble" for flour as the Chi­nese em­po­ri­um sup­port­ed Chow Lin On Bak­ery.

She said, how­ev­er, flour was not as ex­pen­sive like to­day, the bak­ery did not use as many chem­i­cals and ad­di­tives like now, and pro­duced a nat­ur­al, whole­some bread that tast­ed bet­ter and last­ed long with­out re­frig­er­a­tion.

Ben­jamin said over time, tech­nol­o­gy took some of the te­dious­ness out of mak­ing bread by hand; the brick oven and chim­ney gave way to LPG fired ovens, elec­tric­i­ty fa­cil­i­tat­ed mod­ern light­ing and mix­ers. It was Anvil Chin, a fam­i­ly friend, who owned a bak­ery in Port-of-Spain and who en­cour­aged them to buy their first mix­er in 1972. Those days, she said, they paid work­ers $16, $20, and $24 a week.

Bak­ery around since 1895

Ben­ji's pro­duc­tion man­ag­er, Andy Ben­jamin said when the bak­ery was be­ing ren­o­vat­ed in 1983 and the sur­vey­ors came to move a bound­ary pick­et, they found a cadas­tral sheet which showed a sur­vey was con­duct­ed in 1895 and there was a brick oven al­ready in ex­is­tence on the prop­er­ty at that time.

He said the bak­ery's op­er­a­tions was eas­i­er now by 100 per cent be­cause of au­toma­tion, as it elim­i­nat­ed some of the stress.

Andy said as a young boy grow­ing up, he and his sib­lings had to get up ear­ly to help his fa­ther mix flour by hand be­fore go­ing to school. He said their fa­ther trained every fam­i­ly mem­ber to do var­i­ous jobs in the bak­ery so that if a work­er called in sick or could not come to work be­cause of an emer­gency, they would not be left in the lurch.

Andy said they learned by tri­al and er­ror since many long-time bak­ers kept their se­crets and hard­ly shared their knowl­edge and ex­pe­ri­ence. But not their fa­ther, he was prepar­ing his chil­dren to car­ry on the busi­ness.

He said while all fam­i­lies have squab­bles and dif­fer­ences of opin­ion, at the end of the day, they get the job done.

Labour of love

Op­er­a­tions man­ag­er In­grid Ben­jamin is the dy­namo be­hind Ben­ji's Bak­ery. In­grid said her fa­ther told her that she brought good luck to the fam­i­ly as they built a new flat on the premis­es and she was the first to be born in the Guaico home.

In­grid, 56, who has been de­scribed as the best ne­go­tia­tor and the one with shrewd busi­ness acu­men, said at ten years she was en­trust­ed with pay­ing for the bak­ery's flour or­der at Mar­lay's be­fore go­ing to school.

In­grid said she and her sib­lings had grown ac­cus­tomed to the rou­tine of get­ting roused by her fa­ther at 3 am and as­sist­ing with what­ev­er need­ed to be done. They would be re­ward­ed with mon­ey for treat or the school bazaar by their fa­ther for their ded­i­ca­tion and hard work.

She said she en­joyed get­ting up and work­ing. And when she re­called how her fa­ther had to get up ear­ly and work hard from a young age and the strug­gle they went through to suc­ceed, she is even more com­mit­ted to the fam­i­ly busi­ness.

In­grid, like her par­ents, con­tin­ues the tra­di­tion of do­ing char­i­ta­ble work as her fam­i­ly did be­fore her—aid­ing clubs, schools, neigh­bour­ing com­mu­ni­ties, po­lice sta­tions, hos­pi­tals, church­es and is in­volved with var­i­ous or­gan­i­sa­tions es­pe­cial­ly the feed­ing of three chil­dren's homes in the San­gre Grande area an­nu­al­ly.

When there is a death in the fam­i­ly of a res­i­dent in the com­mu­ni­ty, In­grid would pack din­ner rolls and some­times cash to help the per­son.

The car­ing and giv­ing do not stop there, she gives dis­counts to chil­dren dai­ly.

In­grid said chil­dren may have no mon­ey and noth­ing to eat when they get home for the night, so they would sit in front the bak­ery and ask for what they call "ex­tras", mean­ing items that were not sold for the day.

She said some­times moth­ers would leave to go to work and de­posit their chil­dren in front the bak­ery, she would give them mon­ey to go to school and re­turn and al­so give them some­thing to eat and drink.

The bak­ery has been a proud spon­sor of the US Boys Sports & Cul­tur­al Club for the past 25 years.

Even through the long hours and many days, In­grid in­sist­ed that she will not give up as serv­ing in the fam­i­ly busi­ness is a labour of love.