Car­ol Quash

As more peo­ple en­ter the culi­nary en­tre­pre­neur­ial world, there has been an in­crease in the de­mand for rental of test and com­mer­cial kitchens that pro­vide more work­ing space and are equipped with in­dus­tri­al-grade equip­ment.

On Ju­ly 26, MG Com­mer­cial Kitchen & Culi­nary Rentals opened its sec­ond com­mer­cial kitchen, in Tu­na­puna, an in­vest­ment that cost its own­er Edrick Walk­er ap­prox­i­mate­ly $315,000 on com­mer­cial ap­pli­ances and an­oth­er $220,000 on build­ing ren­o­va­tions and elec­tri­cal up­grade.

Big­ger than his first kitchen, in St Joseph, which was opened 12 years ago and can ac­com­mo­date 12 peo­ple, the new fa­cil­i­ty ac­com­mo­dates 25 and is equipped with mul­ti­ple in­dus­tri­al-grade ap­pli­ances, and an as­sort­ment of small ap­pli­ances and cut­lery. It was de­signed with chefs, cater­ers, bak­ers, culi­nary in­struc­tors and start-up food en­tre­pre­neurs in mind, to whom Walk­er of­fers a range of rental pack­ages. He said he al­so used to of­fer cook­ing class­es, but now he hires chefs in dif­fer­ent dis­ci­plines to fa­cil­i­tate those pro­grammes.

“Our very first client at Com­mer­cial Kitchen and Culi­nary In­sti­tute in Tu­na­puna was chef An­tho­ny, a sushi in­struc­tor. He had al­ready done sev­er­al class­es at our St Joseph fa­cil­i­ty, but this one is more con­ve­nient for him to use, since he lives just ten min­utes away.”

The new space was owned by Walk­er’s de­ceased par­ents, from whom he got his prac­ti­cal busi­ness train­ing. And al­though he veered away from that path for many years, he even­tu­al­ly re­turned, full cir­cle, to the scents and sounds that sus­tained his fam­i­ly dur­ing his teenage years.

“It all be­gan in 1976 when I was just 17 years of age and at­tend­ing Hillview Col­lege, in Tu­na­puna,” Walk­er told Busi­ness Guardian.

“For over 28 years, my mom op­er­at­ed a cafe­te­ria at St Charles High School,” al­so lo­cat­ed in Tu­na­puna.

Every lunchtime, he would leave school and race to the cafe­te­ria to help his moth­er sell. He’d then re­turn to school, and when school was dis­missed he would go home, change, and head back to cafe­te­ria to sweep, mop and clean the ta­bles and floors. He al­so had to col­lect all the emp­ty soft drink bot­tles and put them back in­to the emp­ty crates, re­fill sev­er­al of the emp­ty soft drink dis­pens­ing ma­chines, ster­ilise bot­tles, make juice and bot­tle it.

“This five-day dai­ly rou­tine was very time-sen­si­tive be­cause my lunch break was on­ly an hour. There­fore, it took me ten min­utes from my school com­pound to get to my mom’s cafe­te­ria. I’d help her sell for 20 min­utes to re­duce the crowd to a man­age­able size. Then I would have to shov­el down my own lunch and head on back up to school, giv­ing my­self a few ex­tra min­utes to catch my breath and use the wash­room. This went on un­til I grad­u­at­ed from Hillview.”

Every month, he would re­ceive a stipend for his ef­forts, which he spent on en­ter­tain­ment and per­son­al items. But as in­vest­ed as he was in his moth­er’s busi­ness, he nev­er had any in­ten­tion of mak­ing a ca­reer out of that field.

Af­ter grad­u­at­ing from sec­ondary school, he re­turned to the place where he be­gan his busi­ness train­ing, but this time, as a teacher.

“I taught math and tech­ni­cal draw­ing to forms one to five at St Charles High School for over eight years, un­til I de­cid­ed to fur­ther my stud­ies abroad. I left Trinidad for Cen­ten­ni­al Col­lege in Cana­da, with the in­ten­tion of be­com­ing a civ­il en­gi­neer, but in­stead I end­ed up switch­ing ca­reers to be­come a com­mer­cial pi­lot. I re­turned to T&T hop­ing to work at BWIA, but that didn’t hap­pen. I end­ed up work­ing as flight in­struc­tor at Briko Air Ser­vices and al­so as an ad hoc com­mer­cial pi­lot at Neal­co Air Ser­vices, just months be­fore the 1990 at­tempt­ed coup.”

Not long af­ter, Neal­co closed its doors and Walk­er found him­self with­out a job. But then the un­ex­pect­ed hap­pened; he re­ceived a phone call to in­ter­view for a job for which he had nev­er ap­plied.

“Dur­ing the in­ter­view, I found out that it was a po­si­tion at an Amo­co off­shore plat­form in­stal­la­tion and they want­ed some­one with avi­a­tion ex­pe­ri­ence. When I ar­rived on the plat­form via he­li­copter, to my great­est sur­prise, I saw ex­act­ly what my fu­ture dream was go­ing to be: a beau­ti­ful, shiny, stain­less steel com­mer­cial kitchen and I said to my­self, ‘I got to have me one of these some­day.’”

He said he worked off­shore for 22 years and his dream kitchen nev­er came to fruition dur­ing that time.

“I was bat­tling with my per­son­al is­sues, in­clud­ing a di­vorce from his first wife.”

Af­ter meet­ing his sec­ond wife, Lau­rette, they both de­cid­ed to re­alise the com­mer­cial kitchen dream, which would be their re­tire­ment plan.

“On our first com­mer­cial kitchen in St Joseph, we in­vest­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly $295,000 on pur­chas­ing com­mer­cial ap­pli­ances and an­oth­er $150,000 on build­ing ren­o­va­tions and elec­tri­cal up­grade. We im­port­ed all of our com­mer­cial ap­pli­ances from the US, be­cause back then, there weren’t many places of­fer­ing us the equip­ment that we were look­ing for with de­cent prices. We launched our first com­mer­cial kitchen in 2014 and lots of ex­ec­u­tive chefs and tu­tors from the (now de­funct) T&T Tourism and Hos­pi­tal­i­ty In­sti­tute would come every so of­ten to do prep work for wed­dings, par­ties, an­niver­saries etc.”

Walk­er said as a young man, he of­ten used to ask him­self if the sac­ri­fices he made as a teenag­er were worth it, and it was not un­til lat­er in life that he un­der­stood the val­ue of those lessons he re­ceived in his moth­er’s kitchen.

“It was my busi­ness train­ing from my moth­er…It was on­ly when I read how David (King of Is­rael) had to take care of sheep be­fore ris­ing to his throne, and I felt ex­act­ly like him.

First­ly, I owe my busi­ness suc­cess to Almighty God and to mom and my wife.”