GEISHA KOW­LESSAR-ALON­ZO

Se­nior Re­porter

geisha.kow­lessar@guardian.co.tt

Lo­cal re­tail chain Presto has reaf­firmed its con­fi­dence in T&T's busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment, as it de­clined to com­ment on the ar­rest of Blue Wa­ters founder Do­minic Hadeed, 52, his wife Genevieve Hadeed, 42, and her aunt Star Sab­ga, 69.

The trio were held in con­nec­tion with an al­leged con­spir­a­cy to mur­der — with state in­tel­li­gence al­leg­ing a plot tar­get­ing se­nior Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

While the is­sue has at­tract­ed sig­nif­i­cant na­tion­al at­ten­tion, Presto's fa­cil­i­ties and de­vel­op­ment man­ag­er Sayyad Mo­hammed said the com­pa­ny was not in a po­si­tion to ad­dress the is­sue.

“At this stage, we can­not com­ment on the mat­ter in­volv­ing Mr. Do­minic Hadeed, as we do not have all the facts,” Mo­hammed told Guardian Me­dia at the re­veal of the en­hance­ments to Presto Mar­ket Tumpuna yes­ter­day.

While the ar­rests have gen­er­at­ed pub­lic at­ten­tion, Mo­hammed stressed Presto re­mains op­ti­mistic about the lo­cal busi­ness cli­mate and con­tin­ues to in­vest in ex­pand­ing and im­prov­ing its op­er­a­tions.

“With re­spect to in­vestor con­fi­dence, our out­look re­mains strong. We con­tin­ue to show con­fi­dence in the mar­ket by in­vest­ing in our Presto busi­ness, in­clud­ing our on­go­ing store im­age en­hance­ment pro­gramme and planned new store open­ings. These in­vest­ments show our com­mit­ment to growth and to serv­ing cus­tomers across Trinidad and To­ba­go,” he ex­plained.

That com­mit­ment, Mo­hammed not­ed, is re­flect­ed in the com­pa­ny's con­tin­ued cap­i­tal spend­ing and ex­pan­sion ef­forts, which it views as a demon­stra­tion of long-term con­fi­dence in the do­mes­tic econ­o­my.

The trans­for­ma­tion of Presto Mar­ket Tumpuna and al­so O'Meara forms part of a broad­er na­tion-wide im­age en­hance­ment pro­gramme, which re­flects Presto's con­tin­ued in­vest­ment in mod­ernising its re­tail net­work.

A key fea­ture of the up­grad­ed Tumpuna store is the in­tro­duc­tion of lo­cal­ly roast­ed, fresh­ly brewed barista cof­fee as Presto con­tin­ues to blend lo­cal favourites with mod­ern con­ve­nience.

"We felt the need to ex­pand giv­en the change in the econ­o­my, giv­en the things that we are now see­ing, what's hap­pen­ing with­in the world and we need­ed to come back with some­thing stronger and that's where we came back with the cof­fee con­cept," he added.

The Tumpuna out­let, which first opened in 2017, is the fourth lo­ca­tion to fea­ture the con­cept along­side branch­es in Aranguez, South Park and O'Meara.

Be­yond the Tumpuna lo­ca­tion, the com­pa­ny has plans to trans­form its wider net­work over the com­ing year.

"We have our in­ten­tion of go­ing up the is­lands, mul­ti­ple dif­fer­ent is­lands as you will see with­in the com­ing months," he said.

Mo­hammed ac­knowl­edged that for­eign ex­change short­ages con­tin­ue to present chal­lenges for busi­ness­es across the coun­try. How­ev­er, he said Presto has been work­ing with lo­cal sup­pli­ers as part of its strat­e­gy to nav­i­gate those con­straints.

“Our re­gion­al ex­pan­sion plans are meant to cir­cum­vent that, for us to start to bring in that forex in­to the coun­try...We are ex­port­ing a Presto busi­ness, a lo­cal busi­ness,” he said.

He added the com­pa­ny hopes to ex­port a lo­cal­ly de­vel­oped brand and prod­ucts to new mar­kets, in­clud­ing pop­u­lar items such as sausage rolls, beef pies and cof­fee of­fer­ings.

The next up­grad­ed Presto Mar­ket is sched­uled for Diego Mar­tin.