“Anything is possible”
The mouth-watering, delicious aroma of barbecue wafts through the air on silver billows of smoke as the grillmaster intently tends to the rows of glistening, juicy honey-brown chicken legs over smouldering coals, and waves of customers, eyes bright with anticipation, inhale blissfully before hurrying off with the distinctive black boxes of barbecued chicken accompanied by tender cheese covered fries (potato/plantain), potato salad, or macaroni and cheese. With hints of smoke and sweetness, the well-seasoned, spicy meat simultaneously makes you want to gulp it down and linger for a very, very long time, savouring each bite, and the sides are just as scrumptious.
But that’s just one aspect of owners Lesley “Two Feet” Howell; Rawle Burkett and Kehinde Griffith’s barbecue business. “D” Grill Bar-B-Que Services provides everything down to bulk orders if needed for you to create your own fabulous experience.
“I never thought I would be here,” Howell confided. He was an in-demand barbecue “cook” when his cousin Rawle suggested that he open his own business rather than continue to travel all over manning the oil-drum grills typical of Guyanese barbeque for other people. But Howell had no funds to start up, so his cousin took all the money he had – some $20,000 – and along with their other cousin Kehinde, they opened the business.
“We couldn’t get a loan. We tried and tried, but we couldn’t get a loan. We started with one frying pan, one barbecue drum, and must be about three pans (at the roadside)…It’s better that we started small and grow than we just come out big…you know, people keep coming and everybody like it and they tell somebody and somebody tell somebody and that’s how it kept happening.”
And the more customers they got, the more they improved their equipment and location and expanded their business hours. “We started just Friday and Saturday, but then we added Wednesday because of the demand” and so on. Now the registered business is so busy, it employs more than 20 employees over two shifts and is open seven days a week from 12:00h to 12:00h most days.
Howell, who prides himself on serving freshly prepared food every day and distributing the leftovers to staff and the homeless, is also hoping to expand to another location next year where customers can dine in.
“I was the cook,” he reiterated before revealing with a mischievous smile that he has been a vegetarian for more than 20 years. “People would ask me how I knew it (the barbecue) was done…I would call someone and have them taste it.”
11:00 am on the day of our interview at the Mandela Avenue and Joseph Pollydore Street location, the first batch of chicken, which was seasoned at another location, was cooking in the outdoor grilling area framed by coconut trees, employees were busy making preparations for another day of making locals and their bellies barbecue happy, and Howell, who manages “D” Grill, was putting out fires. An employee had not shown up, and he was busy finding a replacement; his trip to collect the truck newly purchased by the business on hold for the moment. In between phone calls to successfully solve his staffing issue, he reflected on his experience, crediting his cousins for providing the impetus for the business. “Anything is possible,” he says before introducing his Uncle Cheddi, Griffith’s father, and acknowledging the example and opportunity he provided for the younger generation.
The fiery Griffith patriarch, whose lively sense of humour is shared by the second generation, started the first business at the location in 1992 – a Graham bread outlet, which he expanded into a shop. Love and mutual respect define their family dynamic.
When asked what advice he would give would-be entrepreneurs who are hesitant about actually starting up their own businesses, Howell said consistency was key to operating a business. “I had doubts myself before. Be consistent in whatever you do… we put on 30 pieces of chicken and were giving away 20…I was there nine hours….burning coals…but then we started selling 15, 20…”
He also called for financial institutions to reduce the paperwork small businesses must submit to open accounts and get loans, and acknowledged Scotiabank and their chicken suppliers Bounty and Toucan for their assistance as well as the credit the latter two extended. Howell’s cousin, Khamase “Ma$e” Griffith (Kehinde’s brother), completes the quartet of this generation of entrepreneurs in the family, living as he quipped the “rags to riches” story. A barber for the past 17 years, he started by the roadside under a tarp; today Ma$e Barbershop is an air-conditioned structure, right next door to the bar he also owns that shares a wall with “D” Grill. Beyond the usual assortment of beverages, the bar sells a wide array of bottled local juices.
With an easy manner and ready smile, the friendly businessman is a constant presence in the barbershop that is very much a social hub for customers, from all over Georgetown. “To get here (owning a business) is hard work; to keep on top of your game is even harder….a lot of long hours,” the self-taught barber, who spends up to 18 hours in his shop, explained. “You have to be here when business isn’t doing, and you have to be here when the customers are here.”
“Owning your own business is more money and more hard work.”
The 33-year-old father of four says he gravitated towards his profession as he himself would visit the barbershop twice a week to get his hair cut and he realised “barbering was a good thing”. The savvy teen was so sure of what he wanted to do that he set up shop besides his father’s business and began working, learning as he went along from both his mistakes and successes. “I never really saw myself as working for someone. I always liked to do my own thing. I decided to start here where there was no barber rather than go into competition with all the barbers in a barbershop.”
His advice to budding entrepreneurs? “Know what you like and go ahead with it. If you like sweeping, be the best sweeper you could be.”
Contact: 4 Mandela Avenue and Joseph Pollydore Street (Durban Street), Georgetown
“D” Grill Kings:
683-7870; facebook @ D Grill Kings; Ma$e Barbershop: 642-4621
