Car­ol Quash

At 25, Jen­ni­ka Joe­field is the Chief Op­er­a­tions Of­fi­cer of Joe­field En­ter­prise Ltd, a small busi­ness that was gen­er­a­tions in the mak­ing.

“This busi­ness is ac­tu­al­ly a fam­i­ly busi­ness that has been passed on through gen­er­a­tions.

“It goes back to my great-grand­moth­er, who taught a class in To­ba­go’s trade school on how to en­hance women and their skill.”

The Cin­na­mon Hill, To­ba­go-based Joe­field En­ter­prise was of­fi­cial­ly brand­ed in 2009, and pro­duces a wide va­ri­ety of lo­cal con­fec­tionar­ies, in­clud­ing sug­ar cakes, benne balls, a range of pre­served fruits, tamarind balls, gin­ger nut cake, and toolums.

“Be­cause we do ex­ports, we have had to re­brand some of the names. For ex­am­ple, for the ex­port mar­ket, sug­ar cake is called co­conut can­dy, and benne balls is known as sesame seed can­dy.”

Joe­field said the com­pa­ny has two re­tail booths on the Scar­bor­ough Port, and re­cent­ly start­ed oc­cu­py­ing a new lo­ca­tion at the east­ern ter­mi­nal of the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. The prod­ucts are al­so avail­able in a num­ber of busi­ness places in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“We got in­to su­per­mar­kets in De­cem­ber, 2024, and we start­ed to ex­port to the US last year around Au­gust. Right now we’re in one store in Brook­lyn, New York.”

She said be­cause the com­pa­ny does not have a dis­trib­u­tor, it han­dles the ship­ping it­self.

“Of course we have to go through the right chan­nels, and we got our busi­ness reg­is­tered in the US, and we do pay our tax­es there as well. We have a part-time em­ploy­ee up there who would do mar­ket­ing on the ground, and we would ship it up and they would do the dis­tri­b­u­tion.”

Joe­field ex­plained that they would ship about 20 box­es of prod­ucts every two months to Brook­lyn via DHL. The box­es are stored in a small ware­house.

“It’s just a lit­tle stor­age space, and our per­son would col­lect it from there and man­age it.”

She said on­line pur­chas­es have al­so been shipped to Aus­tralia and the UK.

“I’ve done Bel­gium too. For on­line pur­chas­es we ba­si­cal­ly do maybe 30 to 40 box­es a month, de­pend­ing on sales fluc­tu­a­tion.”

The plan, she said, is to fran­chise and ex­pand.

“I would love to get in­to the Eu­ro­pean mar­ket and ac­tu­al­ly break­through in­to the US mar­ket. I have a very big vi­sion for the busi­ness, and it’s some­thing that I love dear­ly, and I have a pas­sion for. I want to see us in stores such as Wal­mart and Cost­co.”

Al­though it’s a home-based busi­ness, she said pro­duc­tion takes place in a sep­a­rate build­ing from the res­i­dence.

“We do have all the nec­es­sary equip­ment, and we’re cur­rent­ly work­ing on ex­pand­ing to fac­to­ry lev­el.

Ini­tial­ly, Joe­field ad­mit­ted, she didn’t ac­tu­al­ly want to be in­volved in the busi­ness. When she was at sec­ondary school, she would work there dur­ing the va­ca­tion, do­ing sales at the port.

“I just want­ed to go and sell for two, three hours, at our two lo­ca­tions on Scar­bor­ough Port, wrap it up and go home, like a reg­u­lar eight-to-four.”

While en­rolled at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine do­ing a Busi­ness Man­age­ment ma­jor, she de­cid­ed she should get more in­volved in what her fam­i­ly had built.

“I was like, ‘Jen­ni­ka, why fight up to work for some­one else when you al­ready have a head start in life be­cause your par­ents have some­thing that they’re will­ing to teach you and give to you?’ I came home and I put my brain in­to the busi­ness, and so far it’s been re­al­ly good.”

She start­ed as a sales clerk, and then when things start­ed to ex­pand, she re­alised that she need­ed to put in a lit­tle more.

“I told my­self, ‘This is yours and you have to work for it be­cause your em­ploy­ees would on­ly do so much.’” Con­tin­ues on page 9

From sales, she moved to trans­port when the prod­ucts got in­to the stores.

“And the I was in mer­chan­dis­ing for a while be­cause we are a small com­pa­ny and we couldn’t af­ford to hire im­me­di­ate help at every as­pect. As the busi­ness grew, we all played mul­ti­ple parts.”

Af­ter mer­chan­dis­ing, she took on a role in so­cial me­dia mar­ket­ing, in which she still plays an ac­tive role.

“And from the so­cial me­dia mar­ket­ing, I came up to the ex­ec­u­tive as an op­er­a­tional of­fi­cer be­cause we start­ed to get help. I make sure the lo­gis­tics run well, every­body’s do­ing what they’re sup­posed to do. If a prob­lem pops up, I’m the go-to per­son. Any­thing to do with op­er­a­tions.”

Joe­field said the busi­ness has come a long way from where it start­ed, and when she took on an ex­ec­u­tive role, she had to make a num­ber of changes.

“We were sell­ing the prod­ucts in tied plas­tic bags at the port,” so the pack­ag­ing had to be up­grad­ed.

“We got through with gov­ern­ment fund­ing as well, that’s how we even end­ed up do­ing the pack­ages with Ex­port TT. We were picked to do the pro­gramme, and from there we got a lit­tle ex­po­sure and a lot of things had to change.”

They were taught about qual­i­ty con­trol, stan­dard­i­s­a­tion, meth­ods, the prod­ucts were test­ed, and they reg­is­tered as an ac­tu­al busi­ness, as op­posed to just hus­tling every day to sell sweets. The busi­ness em­ploys 12 work­ers, but not all are per­ma­nent.

“So, for ex­am­ple, now it’s Car­ni­val, so it’s one of our busiest sea­sons. We def­i­nite­ly hire more help, but not every­body is per­ma­nent.”

Joe­field said her par­ents, Pearl and Fitzher­bert have not ful­ly re­tired, but have charged her with the day-to-day man­age­ment of the busi­ness in which they’ve in­her­it­ed.

“This busi­ness sent me to school; this is what I ba­si­cal­ly knew grow­ing up. My mom mar­ried in­to it, and I learned from her and dad, and I in­tend to pass on the suc­ces­sion.”