This week Raw Fit­ness Health Club will open its sec­ond lo­ca­tion. The new spot at the Brent­wood Mall is set to be­come the largest gym in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

The gym’s open­ing rep­re­sents the lat­est step in Khan’s Poul­try & Meats and its part­ner com­pa­nies’ ex­pan­sion in­to the Ch­agua­nas bor­ough.

In a pe­ri­od where many busi­ness­es have con­sol­i­dat­ed or even down­sized their phys­i­cal pres­ence, the group has tak­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to fur­ther es­tab­lish it­self.

Nyal Khan, Di­rec­tor at Khan’s Poul­try and Ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of Edan K Prop­er­ties Lim­it­ed, said the plans to ex­pand had been in place well be­fore the pan­dem­ic hit.

The im­pact of COVID-19 may have de­layed it slight­ly, but Khan’s Poul­try’s des­ig­na­tion as an es­sen­tial ser­vice cre­at­ed the ide­al mo­ment to push through for the group.

“Our plan­ning with the Khan’s ex­pan­sion, even the Raw Fit­ness ex­pan­sion that plan­ning was done well be­fore COVID. So we ac­tu­al­ly start­ed ex­pand­ing Khan’s Poul­try in 2018. And we have a long-term plan to ex­pand the re­tail pres­ence of Khan’s. So par­tic­u­lar­ly with Khan’s be­ing an es­sen­tial ser­vice, that brand, in par­tic­u­lar, was not neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed by COVID,” he said.

Since March 2021, the roll­out has been in full force. Four new Khan’s Poul­try lo­ca­tions were opened in Gulf View, Gas­par­il­lo, and two lo­ca­tions in Ch­agua­nas at Munroe Road and Rod­ney Road, En­deav­our, tak­ing the num­ber of Khan’s lo­ca­tions to six.

The Brent­wood gym will be the third sig­nif­i­cant brand un­der the group’s um­brel­la that would be opened in the Ch­agua­nas bor­ough in the past 18 months.

The group had long had its eyes on fur­ther in­vest­ment, which has sur­passed $16 mil­lion, in the Cen­tral bor­ough. The group saw vast busi­ness po­ten­tial in the area, so when the op­por­tu­ni­ty came knock­ing, the group was ready to make the deal in spite of the pan­dem­ic’s chal­lenges.

Khan ad­mit­ted the time had not been kind to the Raw Fit­ness Brand, as, un­like the Poul­try shop, the gym was closed for large chunks of the pan­dem­ic.

He added the Gas­par­il­lo branch was still some way off what was pre­vi­ous­ly con­sid­ered nor­mal busi­ness.

“Gas­par­il­lo did suf­fer bad­ly I mean, Raw Fit­ness along with some of the oth­er gyms did close even be­fore the man­dates were is­sued to close gyms, be­cause I think most of the gym own­ers re­alised that, you know, to be re­spon­si­ble, you re­al­ly need to think about your mem­bers,” he said, not­ing that at the Gym’s peak it would have 100 re­cur­ring mem­bers.

The com­pa­ny has not hedged its bets in the slight­est, as the Brent­wood lo­ca­tion com­mands 22,000 square feet and fea­tures an as­tro­turf for fut­sal and in­door crick­et.

“The de­ci­sion to do the Brent­wood lo­ca­tion was planned well be­fore COVID as well. We com­mit­ted to tak­ing the space at Brent­wood, I be­lieve that could have been around 2019 or even 2018. And of course, com­mit­ting to tak­ing the space, procur­ing equip­ment, hav­ing some of these con­tracts signed and sealed meant well, the plan was to move for­ward with the in­vest­ment re­gard­less, and then of course we must I mean, you know, be­ing op­ti­mistic about com­ing out of COVID, we thought that hav­ing the gyms open, well at least do­ing the build-out late 2021 for an open­ing in 2022 It would give us the right tim­ing to open on and at least ease back in­to the mar­ket,” he said.

Khan said the ini­tial feed­back ahead of open­ing has been pos­i­tive. The large Raw Fit­ness sign, vis­i­ble from the Solomon Ho­choy high­way, has gar­nered in­ter­est from the pub­lic thus far.

“We’re get­ting very, very good in­ter­est. We have peo­ple walk­ing up to the lo­ca­tion every day. When will we be open­ing? We get calls all the time. So there is sig­nif­i­cant in­ter­est in Brent­wood, of course the sign is vis­i­ble on the high­way. So every­one knows we’ll be open­ing soon,” he said.

Khan ex­plained that their high­est con­cen­tra­tion for the gym at Gas­par­il­lo oc­curs dur­ing the Ju­ly/Au­gust pe­ri­od, but he was un­sure if the re­cent an­nounce­ment of a po­ten­tial Car­ni­val in 2023 could change that.