AFTER SPENDING ALL her working life in the hotel sector being of service to others, Georgianna “Doll” Adams has learned how to do it well.
Therefore, when the need for a community shop arose in her Smith Road, The Pine community, she decided she would “sell a few things here and there and look out for the needs of her customers”.
It has since blossomed into Faith Variety, a community cook shop, where for the past three years Adams has been putting in 18 hours or more a day preparing meals and serving customers in the shop attached to her home.
Adams said the shop sells the usual dry good and canned items, along with breakfast and lunch. Early in the morning when the children are on their way to school they can get fishcakes and bakes, or, if so inclined, fried chicken or fish.
She prepares the usual Bajan fare of soup, macaroni pie, rice and cou cou on a weekly basis, mostly for residents in the district and staff from Government departments located nearby as her customer base has grown by word of mouth.
Sometimes as late as 6 p.m. there are customers, especially those who work on the road and are out for the entire day. Therefore she has not been able to stick to her original intention, which was to close off by 2 p.m.
“I said to myself maybe I would start a small thing, never expecting that it would take off. People really appreciate that the shop is here and open early for their convenience and close at 10 p.m.,” Adams said, heading into the kitchen to prep for the next day’s meals.
She said she always loved cooking, though was never inclined to prepare food for sale – so Faith Variety happened by chance.
“Cooking was something I loved doing, so that made it much easier. I just love to do it. It is now that it is becoming such a task it is not as sweet as it used to be because I am doing it so often, but it comes natural to me; my mother and her mother loved cooking. I would not want to be doing anything else,” Adams said.
Though she is not formally trained, Adams said all of the Bajan dishes she creates are done the way her mother taught her.
“I do have a few trade secrets that I use to spice the food a little better than the average person out there,” she said, adding that she gives her customers the personal attention that says their patronage is appreciated.
Most of her customers are from The Pine and Wildey area.
“People will spend once they have money and every day is not the same, so you get to understand how the money is flowing. Mondays I do not cook as much because people bring to work food from the day before, Tuesday and Wednesday it picks up but Fridays are the busiest.”
The self-starter said she is expanding her kitchen to meet the demand and by early next year hopes to have a larger area for preparing meals. “The problem right now is that the demand is there but I cannot meet it cooking from my personal kitchen,” Adams said.
She drew on her work in the hotel industry, where she moved from waitress to front desk to room service. “I have always had that background with people and customer service. The business is not just being able to cook well; it is being able to keep people happy.”
She noted that some people can be difficult so she has learned to deal with all types of personalities and she has learned “not to take anything personal”.
“My customers would come in here and tell me some of the hardest things but I laugh with everybody and it is not a problem,” she said.
Adams said she tries hard to keep her margins low so people can still get a good meal for their money even though costs continue to rise and she has time, labour, gas and lots of other inputs to consider.
One difficulty, though, has been people who do not settle debts or want to come with “short money”.
“In business sometimes you have to draw lines that everybody do not like. Some would come and say they want to owe 30 cents or change, and that is no problem, but if you trust and refuse to pay, I will not run you down, but I will not give you anything again,” she said.