For the vast ma­jor­i­ty of the past two years, the clos­est ex­pe­ri­ence many had to a din­ner date would be head­ing to a gro­cery with their part­ner and pick­ing up a ready-made meal.

How­ev­er, this Fri­day, a se­ri­ous vari­a­tion of that con­cept is com­ing as the Food Hall gro­cer­ant is set to open its doors of­fi­cial­ly to the pub­lic.

The new en­ter­prise is ex­act­ly what it sounds like, a gro­cery and a restau­rant com­bined in­to one.

The idea of gro­ceries be­ing a spot to grab pre­pared meals isn’t new and that con­cept flour­ished dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, the idea for the gro­cer­ant came long be­fore COVID-19 lock­down re­stric­tions ex­plained Omar Hadeed, one of the founders of the Food Hall.

“So first of all, the idea was ac­tu­al­ly for­mu­lat­ed three years ago in 2019 by my­self, Jonas Za­k­our and Daniel Fakoory,” said Hadeed, “We are the three share­hold­ers of this par­tic­u­lar project, of which it’s called a gro­cer­ant, which is a hy­brid be­tween a gro­cery and a restau­rant. So in 2019, I would say mid-2019, we start­ed to for­mu­late an idea. “

The three friends were speak­ing about their ex­pe­ri­ences at lo­cal su­per­mar­kets and as they com­pared notes, be­gan to cre­ate the idea for the Food Hall.

“So we all com­plained about the ex­pe­ri­ences that we had at lo­cal su­per­mar­kets, and we want­ed to cre­ate this space, where­by it would be a lot more com­fort­able, have a lot more of an aes­thet­ic, be a lot more pleas­ing, and in­cor­po­rates all of the as­pects that most cus­tomers would com­plain about at our lo­cal su­per­mar­kets,” said Hadeed.

“So we set out in 2019 to build a store that of­fered all of the im­prove­ments so to speak, in terms of cus­tomer ser­vice, great prod­ucts, and dis­plays. We built in a full restau­rant and bak­ery to which every­thing all of our meals, grab and go meals are pro­duced fresh­ly every morn­ing,” he said.

The entrance of Food Hall at Piarco Plaza

Photos courtesy Kieran Andrew Khan

The Gro­cer­ant stands apart from oth­er su­per­mar­ket chains that of­fer meals as cus­tomers can or­der spe­cif­ic meals which will be pre­pared on-site as op­posed to the typ­i­cal­ly prepack­aged meals sold at oth­er gro­ceries.

“We have a chef de­mo sta­tion where our on-site chefs, we have restau­rant qual­i­ty chefs and bak­ers and butch­ers. They will be pro­duc­ing their meals as I said, for the grab and go por­tions every sin­gle day. You can al­so dine in­side the store and out­side on our pa­tio area. We have a full com­ple­ment of wine and spir­its to pair with our meals. So re­al­ly and tru­ly the in­ten­tion is for the cus­tomer to come and pick up their next meal with a side of gro­ceries and every­thing about the store,” said Hadeed.

“It’s about time that this new con­cept was de­vel­oped. It’s about time in terms of cus­tomers get­ting ex­act­ly what they want. It’s about time that cus­tomers could get in and out of the store as quick­ly as pos­si­ble. You know, in Trinidad, and in most parts of the world, most cus­tomers com­plain about the su­per­mar­ket and gro­cery shop­ping and it’s be­come mo­not­o­nous. It’s be­come a chore and we want it to be­come an ex­pe­ri­ence. We want peo­ple to ac­tu­al­ly look for­ward to it. And we ac­tu­al­ly be­lieve that this is a des­ti­na­tion shop where peo­ple from all over the coun­try will want to vis­it it at some point in time.”

The idea how­ev­er was put on hold when the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic hit in ear­ly 2020, putting their plans on de­lay for over three years.

“It made us change our con­cept some­what. And when the econ­o­my re­al­ly did open back in 2020, we had a dif­fer­ent vi­sion, and then ob­vi­ous­ly had post-COVID where­by things some things went back to nor­mal and some things that ob­vi­ous­ly changed,” he said.

But the break proved ben­e­fi­cial to an ex­tent as Hadeed, Fakoory and Za­k­our had time to re­fine their mod­el, find a lo­ca­tion, and prop­er­ly re­cruit staff to ex­e­cute their vi­sion.

The gro­cer­ant’s lo­ca­tion at Pi­ar­co Plaza had been pre­vi­ous­ly of­fered to two su­per­mar­ket chains. The trio’s ex­pe­ri­ence con­duct­ing busi­ness in the area al­so proved a plus as they felt the area would be a good spot.

“We un­der­stand and we know the po­ten­tial in this mar­ket. We al­so have oth­er busi­ness­es with­in this area, which are very suc­cess­ful in com­par­i­son to oth­er ar­eas in Trinidad. We know that it’s a grow­ing area with a huge de­mo­graph­ic. A lot of young peo­ple are with­in that ar­eas. I think there are a lot of fam­i­lies, a lot of new home de­vel­op­ments. So we thought that the lo­ca­tion fit per­fect­ly in terms of the con­cept and the type of cus­tomer that we’re try­ing to at­tract,” said Hadeed.

The gro­cer­ant will oc­cu­py 36,000 square feet, 19,000 sq ft of which will host the gro­cery or re­tail arm of the busi­ness while the re­main­ing will house the ne­ces­si­ties of the restau­rant in­clu­sive of a bak­ery, cold stor­age rooms, and din­ing area.

Inside Food Hall located at Piarco Plaza

Kieran Andrew Khan.

The COVID in­ter­rup­tion al­so helped the group scout for the ide­al staff to pull off their vi­sion, as many with­in the food and bev­er­age sec­tor found them­selves with­out jobs as a re­sult of ex­tend­ed clo­sures. Hadeed ex­plained the gro­cer­ant served as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to find more sta­ble em­ploy­ment in what is still a volatile pe­ri­od for the in­dus­try.

“A lot of them from the restau­rant in­dus­try were very un­cer­tain about their em­ploy­ment at that time be­cause of the clo­sures and so forth. So they want­ed some­thing a lit­tle more se­cure know­ing that the su­per­mar­ket in­dus­try through­out COVID was open. So I think we were very for­tu­nate to at­tract some of the best chefs and so forth,” said Hadeed.

He told the Busi­ness Guardian that 130 pro­fes­sion­als were hired to work at the Food Hall.

The gro­cer­ant, he said, is geared to­wards be­ing a game chang­er in the in­dus­try. Apart from its nov­el con­cept, cus­tomer con­ve­nience is al­so a top pri­or­i­ty as on­line or­der­ing is al­so to be pro­vid­ed at the lo­ca­tion.

“We want to make it as flex­i­ble as pos­si­ble. And again, while we in­tend for this to be a des­ti­na­tion shop for peo­ple all over the coun­try to vis­it you know very fre­quent­ly we still want to cater to our cus­tomers with­in the area and that com­mu­ni­ty and we want to have a great re­la­tion­ship with them. So we want to know that they can come in­to the store and they can say hey, what’s on the menu to­day? Can you make some­thing spe­cial for me?” he said.

The new busi­ness was been teased on so­cial me­dia and quick­ly be­came the talk of sev­er­al so­cial me­dia time­lines. Hadeed said the ini­tial re­sponse on­line as well as from guests who had a sneak peek of the ser­vice was heart­en­ing.

“Cus­tomers have been ex­treme­ly ex­cit­ed, they don’t want to leave. And again, you know, it brings joy to us be­cause we’ve in­vest­ed heav­i­ly in­to this. We took a lot of risks. It was through a very dif­fi­cult time we had to start and stop and start again dur­ing COVID So you know, it’s very re­ward­ing to see the re­sponse from both cus­tomers and sup­pli­ers,” he said.

The in­te­ri­or was con­cep­tu­alised and de­signed by ar­chi­tect Gary Farmer of Gary Farmer and As­so­ciates.