Despite all the searching neither the team in B2 nor the Barbados Police Service had managed to locate Dwayne Holding. The BPS assured B2 that Dwayne was lying low somewhere on the island and would reappear soon. They were sure he hadn’t flown out or got a ferry to another island, the clampdown was too effective they said. Penny confided in Jinnie that she wasn’t so sure, if a load of drones could be smuggled in from Jamaica, an island at the other end of the Caribbean she was certain a person could be smuggled out to a nearby island or even a supposedly neutral country like Colombia or Venezuela.
Jinnie realised that the group was going over the same ground looking for changes and every time one of Dwayne’s friends posted, it was quickly checked to ensure it had no clue to his whereabouts by several of them. Therefore, if she took time out to see Alberto and Brooke it would hardly matter. She explained this to Penny who agreed with her and suggested she should go and meet them and if anything happened, she would immediately contact her by phone.
Jinnie phoned Alberto who said he and Brooke were in the hotel restaurant having a late breakfast and would either be there or waiting for her in the hotel lobby. Jinnie parked in the hotel’s car park and realised it was a 4-star tourist hotel catering for holidaymakers rather than the businessmen of Brian and Belinda’s hotel. Jinnie found them in the hotel lobby, Brooke looking cool and collected in a summer dress and Alberto suffering in a suit and tie. Sitting down with them she quickly brought them up to date with Brian’s news and showed them his spreadsheet. She saw Alberto react when he saw the numbers and realised he was reading it in pounds, and quickly explained that it was in Bajan Dollars and the current exchange rate was about 40p to a B$1. Alberto visibly relaxed.
Brooke quickly absorbed what she was looking at and said to Jinnie, “I’m no expert, and don’t have a vote on the main board, but to me this is a no-brainer. Provided we have the initial resources to buy the business and refurbish it I would vote in favour, it would be a tremendous investment.” Alberto took a little longer to come to the same conclusion, but he was not quite so enthusiastic as Brooke, wanting to see the restaurant first, eat there and then give a final opinion. Jinnie said, “OK why don’t I make the pair of you a booking for this evening so you can judge it for yourself?” Brooke quickly said, “No, let me make the booking in my name, if they think we are associates of yours they will be out to impress, I prefer to get the same level of service as a standard customer.” Jinnie saw the logic in that, and Alberto agreed.
Brooke phoned the restaurant while Jinnie and Alberto chatted, she suggested to him he ditch the jacket and tie as other Bajan businessmen did. Pointing out that it made him look very out of place. He reluctantly agreed and slipped back to his room to leave them behind. When he returned Jinnie and Brooke were laughing. Brooke explained that she had been able to get a cancellation at the restaurant and had a table booked for herself and her father at 8:30 that evening. Her first impression had been good, and that the receptionist had been very polite, friendly and business-like just as they should be. Jinnie said to a now cooler Alberto, that the restaurant’s dress code was smart casual, so not to wear a suit in the evening, slacks and an open-neck shirt were the norm.
Discussions then turned to Auntie JoJo’s chicken shack and Brooke said she was anxious to see it and try the food. Looking at her watch Jinnie explained that it got really busy at lunchtime but if they went over now, they could see how busy it was. But as they had not long finished breakfast perhaps now was not the time to try the food. Brooke said the hotel breakfast had been meagre and all she had eaten was a fruit and toast and she was ready to try something a bit more substantial.
As it wasn’t quite lunchtime, the queues for takeaways and tables were reasonable and after a short discussion, they decided that if they joined the table queue, they could not only try the food but also observe how the staff coped with a busy lunch service. They waited for less than ten minutes before a table became available. After sitting down a waitress immediately brought glasses of iced water and a laminated menu and politely told them her name before asking if they knew what they wanted or would they like a few minutes to study the menu. They chose to study the menu and Gloria said she would be back and whizzed off to clear a recently vacated table.
Looking at the menu, Brooke said, “First impressions; bright, clean, well-trained waitress and really busy. I like the menu, wipe clean, nice colour photos of the dishes make the food look good, it’s what is available, and the cost of each item is clear. It states in big letters that taxes are included in the price and tipping is at the customer’s discretion. So far so good.”
Gloria gave them a few minutes, as promised, before returning. Jinnie asked for fried chicken, chips and beans, Brooke went for jerk chicken and chips and Alberto asked Gloria what she would recommend. She grinned and said, “Everything is good, but my personal favourite is the jerk chicken, but it can be a bit spicy for some people so I would recommend the fried chicken, it is our best seller. So fried chicken, chips and beans it was. Jinnie and Brooke both ordered a large Pepsi Max while Alberto ordered a beer. Gloria asked, “Bottle or Draught?” and Alberto answered, “Draught please.”
Gloria was swiftly back with cutlery wrapped in paper napkins and the drinks in large, waxed paper cups. Brooke looked at Jinnie and said, “This reminds me of a good Wimpy Bar for the sit-down trade, but look at the counter trade, it is fast, slick and everyone is cheerful. Now it’s all down to the food.” Brooke need not have worried about the food; it was very quick and extremely good. Even Alberto, who was not really a lover of fast food, was impressed. Gloria was very quick with the bill and Jinnie was happy to pay what was a very reasonable bill and left a big tip.
Outside Brooke looked all around for another fast-food joint and seeing the KFC over the road said to Jinnie, “I’m just going to have a look at the opposition,” and nipped over the road. She looked in the window and at the menu board before crossing back. “Well, that was interesting,” Brooke said, “It’s about a third full and the offer is typical KFC fare. It is nice and modern looks clean, and it is a lot more expensive than Auntie JoJo’s. But the difference is the number of customers and I suspect that is more to do with the food than the price. I wouldn’t want to have the franchise for that KFC. I’ve made up my mind, I think JoJo’s could be grown into a pretty good chain. But we would need to keep staff and offer food of the same quality everywhere. It would need careful handling; I think we need a partnership, not a takeover.” Turning to Jinnie she added, “Have you talked to anyone there yet?”
Jinnie had to admit that she hadn’t, she had been waiting to get their views before making an advance. She now knew what Brooke thought so she asked Alberto for his view. He thought for a moment before saying, “Well as you know, I am an old restaurateur, and I’m really here to look at the Continental, but I must say I like what I have seen and if you two experts think it is a good opportunity to launch a chain, then I will go along with you. But with my chairman’s hat on can we afford the restaurant, buying into Aunty JoJo’s and setting up a couple of small dark kitchens, all on top of our domestic expansion programme?”
“I asked Brian that very question,” answered Jinnie, “and he has given a tentative yes before seeing the Continental’s books. He says it all depends on the prices we have to pay for the businesses. He said we have ample funds and more to cover all our U.K. commitments. Every business is trading profitably, and our bankers are happy to sit on our growing cash reserve! Brian and I would prefer to see it invested and earning money. He now says the Continental looks likely to cost rather less than in his original thoughts and he thinks it will be trading cash positively almost immediately and will have paid back the investment and making a big profit by the end of year one.”
“He also did his initial costing on Aunty JoJo’s as a 100% buy,” Jinnie continued, “but I’m inclined to agree with Brooke a partnership or joint venture is beginning to look a better bet. As for Dark Kitchens, I suspect they are further down the road than our other projects, so I think we should be in an even better financial position by the time we need to start spending on that.” Brooke said, “We need to talk to Aunty JoJo’s and work out some costs for buying in and opening new units. I want to get together with Belinda and see what the estate agents have to offer.” Jinnie said to Alberto, “I know you prefer to finance all our projects from internal funds but if we had to borrow for these three it would not be very much and not for very long.”
“OK, you’ve convinced me,” said Alberto. “Let’s go and see if there is anyone we can talk to in there.” And with that Alberto turned and walked quickly towards Aunty JoJo’s.
***
Back in Room B2 Dan had just received a report on the police and forensic search of Dwayne’s home. He had been sent a PDF, but he chose to make a hard copy so he could make margin notes and keep a finger in between pages if he wanted to switch back quickly. He sent it straight to the laser printer and it quickly churned out the pages, that he then put in an American-style three-ring binder. Dan speed-read it first and made a few pencil notes on some pages. He also had a plain sheet of paper to hand and made a note of the page numbers he had made notes on.
The police had recovered a single cardboard drone from the house. On inspection, it was found that the electric motor was faulty, so the guess was it had been abandoned at the last minute as non-operational. The house had revealed no clues as to Dwayne’s new location. It had been cleared of paperwork and only fixtures and fittings remained. The fridge and freezer had been emptied of everything but a tray of ice cubes. The ginger cat was Dwayne’s, but a neighbour had been asked to look after ‘Growler’ for a couple of weeks and had been given a big box of cat food pouches, a giant-sized box of dry cat food to mix with the wet pouches and a couple of pouches of Growlers favourite cat treats. The BPS report concluded that the house had been abandoned before the attack and Dwayne obviously had no intention of returning for his cat.
The forensic part of the report revealed that there was a big pile of ashes in the garden from burnt paperwork. It had been there some time and the ashes had been mashed to dust and the heavy rain of a few nights ago had made anything totally unrecoverable. However, they had found traces of explosive on the kitchen table, and it matched the explosive in the recovered bomb from the cruise ship. Again, the report concluded that the house had been abandoned and an attempt to clean it had been made, but not very well as human hair and fingerprints had been recovered and matched to Dwayne. But there was also that of two others that were not on record and were being shared with other countries.
Dan shared his summary of the new information with everyone and invited them to read the report if they wanted to, as it was quite possible that he had missed something important. Lenny asked to read the binder and Paolo and Penny both opted for being sent a PDF copy. Dan forwarded it to them and as an afterthought included Jinnie in the distribution.
***
Alberto marched past the queue at Aunty JoJo’s and straight up to the counter where he cleared his throat to get a server’s attention and demanded, “Is the manager or owner about, I need to speak to whomever is here please.” “Do you have a complaint sir?” asked the server. “No,” replied Alberto, “We have a proposition to make.” “I think the owner is out back, Sir. If you wouldn’t mind waiting, I’ll pop back and see if she is free,” came the reply.
Alberto, Jinnie and Brooke were ushered into a small rear office where there was only just enough room for them all to sit when an additional visitor’s chair had been found. The late middle-aged lady behind the desk said, “I’m Patricia Hunte, I own Aunty JoJo’s, Paul tells me you have a proposition for me.” “Let me introduce us, I am Alberto Costa, and I am the chairman of the Trattoria Trevi group of companies. This is Dame Jinnie De Luca, and she is our chief operating officer and finally this is Brooke Carter, the managing director of our fast food division. Trattoria Trevi is a very successful British catering company, we operate six Italian restaurants, two of which have Michelin stars, we have an events company that handles weddings and parties, and with SuperBurgers we jointly own Dark Kitchens Limited which owns 10 sets of 12 kitchens that produce takeaway meals for restaurants, we also deliver the meals. Trattoria Trevi leases kitchens from DKL for Italian and traditional British food. Our fast food division has an artisan sandwich business where we make and sell takeaway sandwiches, pies, cakes from our shops and similarly people can eat in our shops. The division also delivers to businesses, sandwiches and cakes made in the dozen shops and 10 kitchens.”
“The business in the U.K. is expanding quickly,” continued Alberto, “We are currently building our seventh restaurant and three more sandwich outlets. DKL are constructing their eleventh set of kitchens and have several more planned. We are now looking at expanding our businesses to the Caribbean and are negotiating to buy a restaurant in Bridgetown. We would like to expand our fast food business here as well and have noticed how successful your business is.” “OK,” said Patrica, “But Aunty JoJo’s is not for sale.”
“That’s not the proposal,” interjected Jinnie, “We are suggesting joining forces with you and rapidly expanding the business with branches across the Caribbean. Starting with more branches in Barbados and then moving to other islands. We have access to a major British refurbishment company who we propose would do the branch designs and we would use a local contractor to do the work. I would like to think we could come to an agreement with you where we either buy into your business as an equal partner or we create a joint venture company to develop a chain. We even see it opening branches in the U.K.”
“I rather like the idea of a joint venture,” said Patrica. “How would you propose it would work? Would it be 50/50?” “That’s what I was thinking about,” replied Jinnie. “To start with, I would suggest you put into this business, and we match it with a cash equivalent. That should give us enough to open a new branch somewhere on the island. We haven’t looked at where yet, but maybe in another part of Bridgetown or maybe Speightstown or Oistins. We would also like to look at home delivery.” “We have looked at home delivery,” said Patrica, “But we don’t have the capacity in this restaurant. You might have noticed we can hardly cope with the current level of customers we have.”
“That leads me to another idea,” said Jinnie, “I am also managing director of DKL Limited and we are looking at opening a six-kitchen home delivery site in Bridgetown. We have been exploring things and our new restaurant would lease one kitchen, SuperBurger another, a fish restaurant is interested in taking another. I would suggest Aunty JoJo’s could take a fourth. I’m pretty sure we could fill the other two kitchens quickly, there must be a roti business or a local food specialist who would be interested. We try not to have competing vendors so we wouldn’t approach the likes of Chefette or KFC. In the U.K. we set up our own delivery business so that one van or moped delivers all the kitchens’ output, we have computer software that can sort it all out.”
“Interesting,” said Patrica, “A kitchen would cure our capacity problems. But we already have a number of food delivery businesses in Barbados, like Hopscotch, DoorDash and Delivacart, but they are all small. Would you want to set up in competition or partner with one?” “I wonder if a joint venture is again the way to go, why reinvent the wheel? They must have some expertise, but they are picking up from multiple businesses and delivering to homes. In our experience in the U.K. this is wasteful of resources. Our software combines the deliveries from 12 kitchens onto one van and sorts out the best delivery route for them. We would need a dedicated delivery service for a kitchen.”
“You know I think this could work,” said Patrica. “I have been looking at opening another restaurant out near Rockley Beach, but I have never made the finances quite work without borrowing. My mum, the original Aunty JoJo, would never borrow to expand the business and she would turn in her grave if she thought I was borrowing. My calculations said a new business would be quickly profitable, but I never had enough cash in the bank to do it without borrowing from them. As you can see, I am always updating something here, we only refurbished the kitchen three months ago.”
Jinnie liked what she was hearing and asked, “I really don’t know how your business is trading, it is obviously profitable, can I get my financial director to come and have a chat with you tomorrow, he is overlooking at the restaurant we have shaken hands on buying. Equally, can Brooke and my refurbishment guru have a look at the property in Rockley? I feel we could work well together.” “I’d like that,” said Patrica. “I would love to grow this business; it is something I have always wanted.” As they all shook hands Jinnie’s phone buzzed. She pulled it out of her pocket and saw it was the report sent over by Dan.
In Chapter 8 – Rockley Bar and Grill
© WorthingGooner 2023
