Perk Up! Taste the brew

Smack in the middle of a throng of bars, restaurants, casinos and pubs on Ariapita Avenue sits a tiny coffee shop. Perk’s Coffee Shop is an incongruity in an area where the pace of business is almost non-stop.    Opened last December, the shop has been causing quite a stir among local coffee lovers and is steadily drawing in those who are already coffee connoisseurs and those who are on the brink of being converted. Owner Kim Ament, a Trinidadian living in Canada with her family, is the brainchild behind  Perk’s. It is managed by Sonja Sahadeo, a close friend of Ament. Sahadeo says Ament wanted to open a cafe in TT, where those who loved the brew could come and enjoy not only a lime but also to get away from the hassles of  their day. Early last year Ament said they came up with the idea to have a coffee house but they also wanted something that was a little different from what was already being offered on the local market. They both wanted to give Perk’s the feel and  look of a foreign coffee house. “So we tried to make it a homey place where people wouldn’t mind liming and wouldn’t feel intimidated to come in,” said Sahadeo. As the idea began to take shape in her mind, Sahadeo said Ament even began dreaming of the shop.

So real was this dream, Sahadeo said this  was how they came up with the shop’s layout and theme. But deciding on everything else was serious business. All the equipment and furniture was brought in from Canada, along with the coffee and cheesecakes. Ament came to Trinidad in June last year to decide exactly what she wanted, and to start the Perk’s rolling. The next step was finding the right type of coffee to introduce on the local market. Ament decided on Seattle’s Best, a well known coffee franchise in Canada. But instead of entering into a franchise with the coffee makers, Ament bought the coffee wholesale and blended it down here. She decided on Seattle’s Best because “it was different from anything else on the local market.” It also gave coffee drinkers a diverse range to choose from, apart from Nescafe and Hong Wing which have been saturating the market for decades. According to Sahadeo, a lot of the expatriates come into their cafe because Perk’s offers them something other than Nescafe. “They want a little piece of home.” She added that passionate local coffee drinkers who have travelled and tasted coffees offered in other countries, find it hard to re-adjust to coffees on the local market.

“They crave something richer, stronger and more robust,” Sahadeo says. To complement the coffee, Perk’s offers a wide assortment of La Rocca gourmet, which are also brought in from Canada. Every month, Perks’ brings in about sixteen  cheesecakes, while the coffee is stocked up every four months. So far, they have invested approximately $60,000, with half of that money being spent on the Italian cappuccino machine that whips up the cafe’s famous blends. Along with this machine, Perk’s has a grinder, slushie machines and a percolator to total its equipment requirements. Sahadeo said Ariapita Avenue is a high rent area, so business people should think carefully before setting up there. Since the space within the shop is very limited, Sahadeo said planning the layout took a lot of time. “It needed to be appealing, while at the same time offer them privacy, the privacy they wanted,” Sahadeo said. One can either sit at the coffee bar, where the coffee is made, or sit at one of the tables.

There are also little tables set up along the front of the shop. Ament visits the shop about three times a year but is content to leave the management to Sahadeo. “She is down here enough to warrant wanting and having a business in Trinidad, she is from here and she wants to do something here,” Sahadeo said. Even though Sahadeo feels crime may be a deterrent to starting new business on Ariapita Avenue, she also feels it is also an area a small business can prosper in. She is optimistic though. “Very soon it will turn into a little local metropolitan area. It is on its way to becoming the liming avenue for tourists as well as locals,” said Sahadeo. Sahadeo says Perk’s is looking for ways to entice customers. Soon, the coffee shop will be offering other blends of coffees. In terms of infrastructure, the shop has limited options. City codes prohibit seating on the pavement in front of the store, so as an alternative, Perk’s will be expanding behind the shop. Perk’s will be putting up a deck area so their customers can enjoy the tranquility of a back yard setting while sipping coffee and dining on cheesecakes. With crime on the increase, the shop is never opened after 8 pm, except on a Friday. But Sahadeo says she is unfazed and will continue to offer their brews.