Our most pop­u­lar street food un­doubt­ed­ly is dou­bles. It is part of our cul­ture for break­fast, lunch or din­ner. No oth­er food comes close to the cham­pi­on of Tri­ni food cul­ture. It re­flects our her­itage mix: the chad­ow beni herb, the In­di­an ori­gins, the tamarind and pep­per sauce, the five-chan­na spoon (for op­er­a­tional ef­fi­cien­cy), and the gun­slinger moves of the sell­er. De­spite its ap­peal, dou­bles have sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges, which could rel­e­gate it to a su­per niche sta­tus.

Every self-re­spect­ing Tri­ni knows the his­to­ry of how we as­sem­bled our beloved street food dif­fer­ent­ly from the orig­i­nal In­di­an ver­sion. Princes Town was the epi­cen­tre, but some­where else on the plan­et, one might look at this tasty, unique dish and ques­tion its rel­e­vance to stand up to the glob­al culi­nary trends. Like how our steel­pan got a for­eign twist of in­no­va­tion that ruf­fled us, some­one, or some­where, an en­tre­pre­neur true to their DNA will trans­form dou­bles to glob­al food sta­tus with high ex­port ca­pa­bil­i­ty.

Look at what some food en­tre­pre­neurs did to the in­dus­try to make it more dom­i­nant. Mc­Don­ald has moved the ham­burg­er out of the kitchen, giv­ing it a glob­al ap­peal. Taco Bell and Piz­za Hut fol­lowed. Mex­i­cans and Ital­ians prob­a­bly were up­set with that trans­for­ma­tion. Star­bucks’s mar­ket­ing mod­el was de­vel­oped in a coun­try that does not grow cof­fee; cof­fee pro­duc­ers are now at their mer­cy.

The US fran­chis­es are the cur­rent cham­pi­ons of the re­tail food busi­ness and pos­sess the su­per bar­gain­ing pow­er KFC has over the chick­en pro­duc­ers. The fast food gi­ants can cre­ate new sup­ply chains that not on­ly give them cost ad­van­tages but can dic­tate the size of toma­toes grown (to make sand­wich­es), such as Burg­er King.

Prob­lems with dou­bles

There are three main is­sues that the chan­na and bara sand­wich (yes, think about it that way for lat­er read­ing) faces that are keep­ing it from pro­gress­ing. First, the meal is un­healthy; fried food is bad for the heart. When you buy dou­bles, you buy a heart at­tack (full dis­clo­sure: the au­thor is an oc­ca­sion­al con­sumer). This low qual­i­ty pre­vents it from be­ing a more dom­i­nant play­er in the long term.

Sec­ond­ly, de­spite your love for our beloved culi­nary de­light, you will not pur­chase it from any ran­dom per­son. How­ev­er, you will stop at any food fran­chise and not con­sid­er food safe­ty is­sues or qual­i­ty. With dou­bles, it is pick and choose, and the ex­tend­ed-line test is the on­ly un­sci­en­tif­ic way to de­ter­mine qual­i­ty.

Third­ly, it is like a craft busi­ness or bet­ter de­scribed as a cot­tage busi­ness. The bara is made one or a few at a time, and the process is not ful­ly mech­a­nised. The split pea bun pro­duc­tion is a slow and painful process for the per­son fry­ing (no won­der it is dif­fi­cult to get fry­ers).

Dou­bles sell­ing is not en­tre­pre­neur­ship

A pro­found ques­tion: Is some­one with a suc­cess­ful dou­bles busi­ness an en­tre­pre­neur? You might say yes. How­ev­er, it does not fit in­to what an en­tre­pre­neur is. En­tre­pre­neurs do some­thing that sep­a­rates them from oth­ers; they prac­tise in­no­va­tion. They look to de­vel­op a bet­ter prod­uct or ser­vice, pro­duc­tion process, or new man­age­ment in­no­va­tion as a su­pe­ri­or busi­ness mod­el.

If a dou­bles sell­er is not an en­tre­pre­neur, what is that per­son? Since they failed the in­no­va­tion test, the on­ly de­scrip­tor is a busi­nessper­son. Some dou­bles sell­ers have done well as those in Debe, in south Trinidad. How­ev­er, have they ad­vanced the culi­nary de­light to deal with the glob­al trends? Some may say that the dou­bles pro­duc­er has unique sauces and added chick­en and shrimp. This “in­no­va­tion” is like adding bells and whis­tles to the horse drone car­riage with the com­ing of the au­to­mo­bile. No fan­cy sauces and ad­di­tives will save the bara man—first slow­ly, and then sud­den­ly he will go.

Bull pis­tle for dou­bles

You may not have heard about an In­di­an en­tre­pre­neur who vis­it­ed Eng­land af­ter a crick­et World Cup, tast­ed the cur­ry sold in su­per­mar­kets, and de­cid­ed he could de­vel­op a bet­ter prod­uct. The British have a love for In­di­an and Asian foods. Gu­lam Kaderb­hoy Noon thought the re­frig­er­at­ed cur­ry was bland, and he could give it some sex ap­peal. He did some re­search to im­prove its shelf life and taste. In 1988, he found­ed Noon Prod­ucts with 11 peo­ple and got a con­tract with Birds Eye for £2.7 mil­lion, and lat­er Sains­bury or­dered 2,000 meals.

Some­times, it takes an out­sider to the in­dus­try to in­tro­duce dis­rup­tive change. The sto­ry of Red Bull start­ed in Thai­land. Cha­leo Voovid­hya sold the en­er­gy drink in the 1960s and mar­ket­ed it un­der Krat­ing Daeng to most­ly truck dri­vers and farm­ers. The for­mu­la was Japan­ese in ori­gin. How­ev­er, the en­er­gy drink mar­ket would not have been glob­al with­out the in­ter­ven­tion of an Aus­tri­an mar­ket­ing ex­ec­u­tive. Di­et­rich Mateschitz worked with the founder’s com­pa­ny and adapt­ed it for Eu­ro­pean taste buds. And so, a new bev­er­age cat­e­go­ry was born.

The dou­bles meal may face the same fate if lo­cal en­tre­pre­neurs do not in­no­vate. The prod­uct is ripe for dis­rup­tion and can po­ten­tial­ly ap­peal to mar­kets that val­ue Caribbean and Asian foods. How­ev­er, we take dou­bles for grant­ed, cre­at­ing a blind spot in our think­ing, as it was with the steel pan.

Next gen­er­a­tion dou­bles

The fu­ture bara and chan­na meal can take sev­er­al scal­able forms. En­tre­pre­neurs can au­to­mate the process and stan­dard­ise the qual­i­ty and safe­ty is­sues. Dou­bles will be made in a fac­to­ry just as corn­flakes and bis­cuits. An­oth­er in­no­v­a­tive ap­proach is mak­ing a su­per­mar­ket ver­sion with great taste and shelf life, such as Noon Foods cur­ry.

Do­ing food re­search to make the bara healthy would put the meal in the ranks of the ce­re­al busi­ness. Mov­ing the food from a cot­tage-type in­dus­try in­to a fran­chised op­er­a­tion, such as Mc­Don­ald’s and KFC, could make it more in­ter­na­tion­al. This scal­a­bil­i­ty can fur­ther re­duce costs and put pres­sure on the chan­na, split pea and wheat sell­ers as the chains do. This en­tre­pre­neur­ial think­ing is al­most like no-box think­ing. Dou­bles mak­ing has to change as break­fast-in-a-box changed how corn­flake com­pa­nies trans­formed at-home cook­ing.

One day, some­one will break our hearts with our beloved street food, whether a lo­cal or a for­eign en­tre­pre­neur; the trans­formed dou­bles will not give peo­ple a heart at­tack. We will buy it with­out much thought about its safe­ty and even get it in­ex­pen­sive­ly from a mass-pro­duced fac­to­ry. Maybe even com­pet­ing with the food re­tail gi­ants on a glob­al scale. Will dou­bles now be a Tri­ni orig­i­nal? Per­haps the new sweet sauce of in­no­va­tion will give it a new life and scal­a­bil­i­ty. How­ev­er, this new life will come from a few vi­sion­ary en­tre­pre­neurs who un­der­stand what in­no­va­tion is.

Saj­jad Hamid

SME & Fam­i­ly Busi­ness Ad­vis­ar

Au­thor--Build Your Lega­cy Busi­ness: Solo­pre­neur to Fam­i­ly Busi­ness Hero

www.linkedin.com/in/saj­jad­hamid

en­tre­pre­neurt­nt@gmail.com

en­tre­pre­neurt­nt.com

The Saj­jad Hamid col­umn nor­mal­ly ap­pears in the Thurs­day, but was moved to this Sun­day to ac­com­mo­date an ad­ver­tis­er