Geisha Kowlessar-Alonzo
From the commercial strips of Maraval to the vibrant, high-traffic avenues of St James, businesses are bearing the brunt of a volatile economy.
Today’s owners must constantly navigate acute forex shortages, surging wholesale costs, changing consumer habits and a pervasive sense of insecurity threatening daily trade.
From traditional gift merchants and retail outfits to personal care service providers, food vendors and specialised dining establishments, operators are issuing stark warnings about declining commercial activity.
To stay afloat, many are forced into restructuring operations, slashing prices, adjusting opening hours or one even contemplating permanent closures.
At Jono’s Gift Shop, Ellerslie Plaza, Maraval, proprietor John Hadeed describes a commercial environment significantly harsher than in previous years.
Having operated for four years, Hadeed estimated that overall sales volumes have dropped by “easily 30 per cent or more” compared to four years ago, driven primarily by a sharp decline in consumer purchasing power.
“People just not shopping as much as they used to,” Hadeed explained, pointing to widespread inflationary pressures across essential consumer sectors.
“Either because they don’t have the disposable income they had before, so they’re probably spending more on food or medicine rather than shopping for gift items,” he said.
Compounding the drop in foot traffic is the chronic difficulty in obtaining foreign exchange to secure new stock.
“That is one of the biggest challenges because even as bad as business is, you still need to get new goods, you want new items to show customers,” Hadeed said, noting, “And it’s crazy difficult to get foreign exchange to buy new goods. I’m a small business. I can’t get as much new goods as I would like every year. “
Asked how he survives with such limited forex available, Hadeed offered a stark two-word response: “Just barely.”
While shipping and customs delays have stabilised to manageable levels, securing official foreign currency to pay international vendors remains the primary operational bottleneck.
On what the future holds if current economic pressures persist, Hadeed was candid: “I’ll have to close down. If you can’t stay afloat, you sink.”
Across the broader commercial landscape, Neil Elias, owner of D Rite Stuff, which has been selling household items at Ellerslie Plaza for 35 years, reported that sales have slowed by 10 to 15 per cent compared to last year.
“Sometimes the economy itself reflects all businesses. The economy has not been very good in the last couple of months,” he said.
Drawing on more than three decades of commercial experience, Elias said that while current market conditions are difficult, they have not yet reached the severe lows of the post-2008 global financial crisis.
“If there are no people to buy, there will be no sales,” said Elias, pointing to current consumer behaviour.
“Once the traffic slows down, the sales will slow down.”
He explained that widespread economic uncertainty directly suppresses household spending.
“If you feel confident in the country you will invest your money, you will spend your money freely. If you don’t feel confident, you try to hold your money... If job security is not there, then you have problems.”
To remain viable, Elias has had to aggressively consolidate operations.
Having previously operated five stores across T&T, he ultimately closed four locations—including a Tobago branch in 2017 due to inter-island transportation hurdles.
Regarding foreign exchange management, Elias noted that while bank limits remain tight, long-standing businesses must work within established institutional boundaries, blending local sourcing with bank allocations to maintain basic operations.
Elias however, remains hopeful that proposed State-backed industrial projects, including foreign investment drives and the potential rejuvenation of the steel plant and the gas industry, could eventually inject new life into the domestic economy.
“These will bring people into the country, expats in. They’ll buy from businesses like mine, services that provide for them. This will be better for the whole country in the long run, if all those things materialise.”
Navigating personal care, hustle for clients
In the personal care and salon service sector, operators are also battling both location-driven foot traffic shifts and reduced consumer grooming frequency.
Ayana Frederick, owner of Fabulousity by Ayana on Vidal Street, St James explained that business over the past 18 months to two years has been “crawling and dragging” as clients cut back on routine grooming to manage household budgets.
“Hairdressing has slowed down a lot...Sometimes we had to drop prices, do specials, it’s been tough.”
Having relocated in February from Ethel Street (also in St James)—where she operated for five years —Frederick noted that physical location heavily dictates foot traffic and customer conversion.
“Ethel Street was great, the foot traffic was great,” she recalled, explaining that she was forced to move because the building owner was selling.
While Ethel Street benefitted from two-way traffic where potential clients easily caught sight of her salon, her new location on Vidal Street sees one-way traffic primarily moving away from Western Main Road, making walk-in discovery far more difficult.
While loyal clients continue to follow a trusted stylist across locations, attracting new walk-in trade requires continuous marketing and social media promotion.
“You just have to be creative and as I should say hustle, hustle,” Frederick emphasised.
To manage product costs without relying on direct foreign currency imports, Frederick sources items locally in bulk or creates natural product lines in-house.
However, unit economics remain challenging when servicing individual clients or purchasing items piecemeal. “When you’re buying products in bulk it becomes easier. When you buy one, one and you have to add on the additional prices and then pay transport to come to work, these things doesn’t make sense.”
Elevated service prices, she noted, are necessary to accommodate rising living expenses and inventory costs.
Similar supply chain hurdles exist elsewhere in the beauty sector.
Shanalla Rambaran, owner of Aura at Shoppes of Maraval noted that while August routinely brings a seasonal drop due to back-to-school expenses, foreign exchange constraints represent a persistent structural hurdle.
“It’s been a huge issue for us to even get products from suppliers,” Rambaran stated adding, “With the quality of products we bring in everything has to be imported. We sometimes rely on suppliers, but the supply is very minimal. We may order four and get one.”
Tight credit card limits further complicate direct importing, forcing business owners to place orders months in advance.
Menu restructuring and micro-vending realities
The squeeze is equally pronounced at the street-food level, where micro-vendors are altering menus directly in response to wholesale food inflation and weaker sales. Christina Bharat, owner of local street-food Best Curry and Pholourie provided a detailed look into how macro-economic conditions have forced operational downsizing at the ground level.
Reflecting on her business trajectory over three years of operation, Bharat recalled sales were originally consistent for her first two years before taking a downturn over the past 12 months.
Beyond normal school vacation lulls, Bharat linked the drop directly to economic conditions and shrinking consumer discretionary spending.
“I think it has a lot to do with the state of the country and it’s getting a little harder. The place has become a lot slower,” she observed, noting that customers are carefully prioritising where they spend their money.
Rising wholesale ingredient prices hit food operators especially hard, forcing Bharat to eliminate entire menu items that were no longer profitable.
“Prices have increased a lot that’s why we stopped doing the roti and actually stick to doing the pies, saheena and the pholourie,” Bharat revealed.
She explained that while produce like potatoes, peppers and garlic remain on the reasonable side at local markets, core dry goods and wholesale pantry staples have increased.
To stay competitive and retain cost-conscious customers, Bharat keeps her menu price points strictly accessible. Pholourie is sold in a price range from $10 to $15, while pies and saheena are priced at $7 each with pholourie remaining her top-seller.
Public safety concerns and early closures
Beyond general economic contraction, crime and public safety concerns are increasingly altering business hours and consumer mobility across commercial centres.
At Razor Zone barber shop on the Western Main Road, St James, tenant Collin Holder noted that commercial activity has experienced a clear slowdown compared to last year, driven by a combination of tight financial conditions.
“A little decline in how people are coming in. It’s probably how the financial situation is right now, and crime, Once you have people on board with taking on crime, that’s it,” Holder explained.
Holder, who previously operated at the corner of Broad and Ethel streets in St James, before moving to his current location a year ago, added that safety fears have directly forced him to alter his operating schedule and close earlier, noting that a couple months ago his bicycle, which he used as a mode of transportation, was stolen.
In addition to closing early, rising operational supply costs are squeezing margins further.
He said even when buying supplies through local distributors and retail chains like Pennywise, prices continue to climb annually.
The high cost of tradition in specialty dining
For businesses offering authentic, specialised cuisines, substituting inputs with lower-grade local alternatives is often impossible without compromising the brand. Operating in a market where imported staples have experienced substantial price hikes, restaurant managers must navigate compounding expenses on essential culinary components.
Nigel Beddoe, manager of Salt N Pepper, Classical Indian Cuisine, Maraval pointed to raw materials and cooking fuel as major drivers of rising overhead costs.
The financial burden extends past fresh produce as key ingredients are maintained to preserve authenticity, amplifying the impact of broader market inflation.
“Thousands, we’re spending like tomatoes, paneer because it is traditional stuff. Everything went up,” Beddoe noted.
Despite widespread inflationary pressures across the food and beverage industry, he said the establishment continues to absorb rising input costs rather than pass them along directly to consumers.
“Well, as much as we can hold it down for us,” Beddoe said noting, “The clientele we have is a kind of higher too.”
Beyond local inflation, international supply chain disruptions continue to present operational hurdles such as importing proteins and specialised goods.
While domestic sourcing covers staples like chicken, international items like lamb—frequently imported from markets like New Zealand—are subject to shipping container delays, customs clearance bottlenecks and price volatility.
“We import through companies, like lamb, cooking cream” Beddoe said, noting that intermediary procurement insulates restaurants from managing direct foreign exchange transactions, shifting the currency access burden onto larger supply house distributors.
“Sometimes we have some trouble to get products so we just have to shop around,” Beddoe added.
Concurrently, local agricultural supply chains have experienced domestic fluctuations, including supply constraints in poultry markets.
For restaurants offering traditional roasted or portioned chicken items, variations in bird size create distinct presentation challenges.
“Chicken, that’s local but now there’s a chicken shortage. If we get smaller chicken we put extra to make up for the quantity,” Beddoe said.
The lingering structural shifts from the pandemic era continue to influence how Trinidadians interact with the food service industry.
In-person dining preferences have evolved, with takeaway and delivery services retaining a significantly higher proportion of overall sales compared to pre-2020 levels, reinforced by public safety concerns.
“Since COVID, people not really dining so we do have a bit of takeaway. But it was better last year,” Beddoe observed, adding, “Because of crime people are not coming out.”
These shifting patterns have led to a moderate contraction in overall sales volume.
Beddoe estimated a modest drop in sales from last year by about 15 to 20 per cent.
Furthermore, the local dining landscape is adjusting to new commercial formats, such as modern open-air food hubs and retail dining plazas like Boxpark, which heighten competition for casual food dollars.
While business operators across T&T continue to demonstrate resilience through disciplined inventory management, efficient prep processes, menu downsizing, and strategic location adjustments, prolonged inflation and tight currency markets may eventually necessitate further price adjustments.
“You can’t operate at a loss,” Beddoe concluded, regarding potential future price adjustments. “If we’re going up it is not a drastic increase now, because we’ll survive.”
