Charles Kong Soo

Glob­al­ly, fast food gen­er­ates rev­enue of over $570 bil­lion.

In 1920, Pro­hi­bi­tion be­gan in the US out­law­ing the sale and con­sump­tion of al­co­hol, as a re­sult of this some peo­ple saw needs and filled them, turn­ing to pro­duc­ing and sell­ing their own il­lic­it al­co­hol known as moon­shine.

There is a par­al­lel phe­nom­e­non to what is hap­pen­ing in T&T dur­ing the State of Emer­gency lock­down with what has now come to be known as con­tra­band/black mar­ket/un­der­ground food.

2021 is the year that food went un­der­ground as though it was il­le­gal drugs or guns sales due to fast food be­ing locked down as a re­sult of COVID-19 and peo­ple were sur­rep­ti­tious­ly prepar­ing and sell­ing to make mon­ey to live as well as to sat­is­fy the crav­ings of the pop­u­la­tion.

Dur­ing this pe­ri­od when restau­rants, food es­tab­lish­ments and street ven­dors are sup­posed to be closed and pri­or to to­mor­row when restau­rants and food out­lets re­open for curb­side, pick­up and take­away, with the ex­pect­ed run on fast food fried chick­en and burg­er chains, cit­i­zens are still get­ting their favourite food fix­es dur­ing the lock­down.

Peo­ple can get from the icon­ic street food, dou­bles, baigan, aloo pie, sa­heena, pholourie, roti, Cre­ole food, un­brand­ed fran­chise fried chick­en, to eth­nic Venezue­lan and Chi­nese fare, piz­za and bar­be­cue, but on the down low.

Some peo­ple are scratch­ing their heads go­ing this can join the list of il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties in TnT such as drug run­ning, il­le­gal guns, play whe, coun­ter­feit goods, "fake" mon­ey, out of sea­son "bush meat," and pro­tect­ed an­i­mals.

Be­sides the gen­tri­fied pre-pack­aged food avail­able in su­per­mar­kets, bak­eries, cer­tain gas sta­tions and trans­mor­ph­ing restau­rants to su­per­mar­kets, the ma­jor­i­ty of food block­ade run­ners are keep­ing a low pro­file, stay­ing in touch with their loy­al cus­tomers, no­ti­fy­ing them of what they have on their menu via so­cial me­dia plat­forms and What­sapp, some even pro­vid­ing home de­liv­ery.

What some peo­ple mis­take for a cav­a­lier at­ti­tude and flout­ing the COVID-19 re­stric­tions, in re­al­i­ty, the un­der­ground food ser­vice providers are dri­ven by eco­nom­ic sur­vival.

Sushi

A tell­tale sign that a well-known dou­bles ven­dor in the East/West cor­ri­dor was churn­ing out prod­uct dur­ing the lock­down for his cus­tomers was the sight of an LPG truck re­plen­ish­ing emp­ty 100 lb cook­ing gas con­tain­ers in front of his premis­es.

Pri­or to the May 3 ban on the sale of restau­rant and street food, an­oth­er dou­bles ven­dor in the East/West cor­ri­dor ad­ver­tised "dou­bles in­side" on a chalk­board out­side a su­per­mar­ket while he sold his pre-pack­aged dou­bles him­self in a cor­ner of the su­per­mar­ket.

Some shops and veg­etable stalls got in on the act sell­ing pip­ing hot dou­bles in in­su­lat­ed con­tain­ers on the sly to their cus­tomers.

A source re­vealed that a par­tic­u­lar su­per­mar­ket to the East was sell­ing an un­brand­ed fran­chise fried chick­en in ro­tis­serie con­tain­ers com­plete with the condi­ments and pep­per sauce they were fa­mous for.

Eliz­a­beth Reina, from Port-of-Spain, a T&T Hos­pi­tal­i­ty and Tourism In­sti­tute trained chef said "I had my cater­ing ser­vice be­fore the Covid-19 lock­down. Since food busi­ness­es were forced to shut down, I de­cid­ed to go ahead with what I call the SOE Edi­tion.

"I low­ered my prices and catered to my cus­tomers' tastes serv­ing from bar­be­cue meats and fries, meat and fish, rice, peas, var­i­ous sal­ads and mac­a­roni pie dish­es, meat­balls and spaghet­ti, Chi­nese, to pies and juices. Even though there was a lock­down and re­stric­tions on food ser­vices, there's still a need for it.

"Mo­ti­va­tion to suc­ceed was im­por­tant, but I al­so need­ed an in­come, there was rent, in­sur­ance, in­stal­ments to pay, NIS pay­ments and I'm yet to re­ceive a salary or rental grant. Since March 20, 2020, dur­ing the first out­break of COVID-19 in T&T, I was work­ing full time in UWI law school as one of the break­fast chefs, then I was out of a job.

"I start­ed two jobs af­ter in the hos­pi­tal­i­ty in­dus­try, the first was at a re­sort, then the beach­es were closed, af­ter the din­er I worked in next closed down, I then de­cid­ed to do my own cater­ing full time."

She said her un­der­ground cater­ing took off by word of mouth, she cre­at­ed a broad­cast list on What­sapp and sent it out to her close, per­son­al friends who sup­port­ed her, who in turn for­ward­ed it to their friends.

Kevon Felmine, Guardian Me­dia's South-based bu­reau re­porter, dis­closed that South­ern­ers had no short­age of un­der­ground food to choose from rang­ing from grilled meats, bar­beque, ham­burg­ers, hot dogs, roti, dou­bles, cur­ry, cre­ole food, piz­za, Asian dumplings, bao, sushi, even Christ­mas food such as pastelles and ponche creme from Pe­nal to Princes Town.

He ex­plained that most of the black mar­ket food providers were ac­tu­al­ly small to medi­um size food out­let own­ers such as bar­be­cue places, some were fam­i­ly busi­ness­es and their on­ly source of in­come.

Felmine re­vealed that there were a few in­di­vid­u­als that did not fit the reg­u­lar pat­tern like one cater­er who was an out of work cruise ship em­ploy­ee who start­ed sell­ing bar­be­cued wings, burg­ers and fries to get by un­til she got a job.

He con­fid­ed that the pop­u­lar street food dou­bles were al­so avail­able in the South­land, a par­tic­u­lar fam­i­ly's cus­tomers called ahead to place their or­der and de­liv­er­ies were made on Sun­days, an­oth­er dou­bles ven­dor was sell­ing from the trunk of his sta­tion wag­on un­til po­lice found out about his op­er­a­tion and told him to cease his busi­ness or be charged for op­er­at­ing a busi­ness il­le­gal­ly.

Felmine said the irony of the sit­u­a­tion was that some po­lice of­fi­cers were sym­pa­thet­ic to the ven­dors' sit­u­a­tion, they and es­sen­tial work­ers even bought food from ven­dors af­ter work­ing a shift, they were too tired and did not have the en­er­gy to cook.

He added that some un­der­ground ven­dors were ad­ver­tis­ing their street food on In­sta­gram and oth­er so­cial me­dia plat­forms.

Chicken Paratha

Felmine said as an es­sen­tial work­er, it was dif­fi­cult for him to al­so cook, su­per­mar­kets were filled with peo­ple who were not work­ing and they were go­ing out every day to pur­chase food, as they were too tired to cook and it was eas­i­er or con­ve­nient to buy food on the low.

He di­vulged that even though food es­tab­lish­ments were closed, some op­er­at­ed clan­des­tine­ly cook­ing food in their kitchens and cus­tomers com­ing for a pre-arranged pick­up.

Felmine ex­plained that the un­der­ground ven­dors who had small busi­ness­es, many of them had ex­haust­ed their sav­ings, de­pend­ed on cash flow, had per­ish­able items and it was nec­es­sary to con­tin­ue work­ing.

He added that many had al­so ap­plied for salary grants since last year and were on­ly now re­ceiv­ing them in some cas­es. They were afraid to go broke but al­so had to pro­vide for their fam­i­lies.

Dr Nass­er Mustapha, se­nior lec­tur­er in so­ci­ol­o­gy and for­mer head of the be­hav­iour­al sci­ences de­part­ment at UWI, St Au­gus­tine said the con­tra­band/black mar­ket/un­der­ground food phe­nom­e­non

was dri­ven by the law of sup­ply and de­mand.

He ex­plained that dur­ing the pan­dem­ic con­sumers were look­ing at cheap and sat­is­fy­ing food, while sup­pli­ers were re­spond­ing to cus­tomers' de­mand for quick, tasty and af­ford­able food.

Mustapha con­tin­ued that two dou­bles cost $10, it was not the health­i­est meal, but the op­er­at­ing word was cheap and fill­ing, cer­tain types of food lent them­selves to con­ve­nience like dou­bles, and Chi­nese food which was nor­mal­ly pre­pared on the spot.

Chi­nese food was al­so fair­ly rea­son­able com­pared to oth­er restau­rant food.

He added that the food providers did not set out to in­ten­tion­al­ly break the law, for many, it was their on­ly source of liveli­hood but had to do with meet­ing a need or crav­ing of con­sumers who loved deep-fried food as ev­i­denced by the with­draw­al symp­toms by many peo­ple for com­mer­cial fried chick­en.

Mustapha said many peo­ple in so­ci­ety didn't like to cook, even though it was cheap­er to cook your own food, if they can af­ford it, they will buy for ex­pe­di­en­cy and the ease of pur­chas­ing.

He men­tioned T&T's thriv­ing street food in­dus­try through­out the coun­try, from the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Cross Cross­ing, San Fer­nan­do, Mara­bel­la, Ari­api­ta Av­enue, and the Ed­die Hart Grounds, Tacarigua.