Never waste a good crisis! Just ask Jamaican-born, New York-based entrepreneur Tony Bowen. A past student of St Aloysius Primary and a 1978 graduate of Jamaica College, Bowen migrated to the US in 1980. A part-time stint in the mail room of a travel company led to a 34-year career which concluded with him attaining the position of vice president/chief technology officer at Universal Skytours, Inc. When the company closed he was able to transition to another event company where he spent eight years, as the IT director before leaving in November 2019.

In January 2020 with the pandemic threatening and eventually shutting down the city that never sleeps, Bowen started to focus on what was coming next. “I came up with the idea of Frozen Jamaican (ready-to-eat) meals that could be microwaved in minutes and that would be filling, while still being nutritious and taste good,” he tells Thursday Food. He registered the company in May of that same year and thus Jamaica Choice Foods, LLC was born. He continues, “With two partners, we launched the brand NormDe and began to look for space to house the company, eventually settling on warehouse space in Lynbrook, NY. It took till May of 2021 before we were ready to approach the USDA for a grant of inspection so that we could start manufacturing and distributing the meals through supermarkets and grocery stores. We were given a conditional grant of inspection in July and started hiring staff in August. Finally, we got clearance from the USDA to start selling our product in September to the public.

Tragedy struck a month later when one of our partners suddenly and unexpectedly died. Until that time we had been getting the word out about the products at a rapid clip; we did it the old fashioned way by pounding the pavement and going into the supermarkets one by one and getting them to stock the product on their shelves. The food business is very much a controlled industry. There is not a straight line from the factory to the supermarket shelf as one might think. There is an element of pay to play, that’s involved and usually the larger manufacturers with deep pockets are the ones that are able to get their products to market much more so than small producers like JCF is able to do. Nonetheless, we have made some inroads.”

That they did with challenges at every corner. Obstacles faced included:

• Brand recognition. “NormDe was an unknown quantity, so we had a mountain to climb to make NormDe a household name.

• Quality over quantity. We are not competing with the traditional Jamaican restaurants who tend to serve larger portions of food than we do. Where we separate ourselves is in the fact that we are providing a healthier option for our customers with smart portion sizes and better-quality ingredients. Our meals range in calories from 390 (curried chicken) to 460 for our brown stew chicken. Our focus is to provide a healthier choice instead of a 1,400 calorie meal. We do not use MSG, browning or any preservatives in our products. Our food has a shelf life of up to six months.

• Inflation has taken over the economy and raw materials are currently at an all-time high. Oxtail is selling for US$12.00 per pound and goat for US$8.90 per pound. We use the highest quality products so you will only get halal quality meats when you purchase our food. We also use hormone and antibiotic-free chicken, so we strive to make sure that the food we serve is of the highest quality. We will hold our prices at the current level for the entire 2022 regardless of what the economy does. That’s a commitment we have made to our customers and our supply chain partners.

• We make four basic Jamaican staples: curry chicken served with white rice, vegetable and carrots; curry goat served with white rice, vegetable and carrots; brown stew chicken served with rice and peas (real coconut cream) cabbage and carrots; and finally, oxtail stew made with rice and peas (real coconut cream), cabbage and carrots.

The Feedback

Everyone who has tried the food has been very positive about it. Jamaicans tend to be very sceptical about anything frozen; they are used to their food being made fresh and consumed right away. They are surprised, however, how good our food tastes and how satisfying it is. There really hasn’t been too many challenges that we have faced outside of trying to convince the supermarket operators to carry our products. The markets are mostly controlled by Spanish-speaking operators and it’s been quite a task trying to convince them to stock an item (other than patties) which seems to be the only authentic Jamaican product sold in 99% of grocery stores in the US. We continue to strive to break down the resistance we face in many quarters from the store managers even in markets where most of the customers are Caribbean people.

Next Step

“We are actively pursuing deals to get us into the national chains (Kroger, Publix, Walmart and Whole Foods) and are trying to get the products into the NY airports because our food is not being represented by any concessions currently. We would love to have the products in a lot of the self-service type hotels such as Residence Inns, Hyatt Place, Townhall Suites etc, What all these properties have in common is that they do not have restaurants and we can provide an option for their guests to purchase delicious food right from freezers in the lobby of the hotels. We’d also like to provide our meals on flights going to the Caribbean and beyond. There was a time when you would be fed a hot meal on every flight of four hours. That has changed over the years and we feel, in this cyclical world we live in, that people are ready to get back to the good old days when you could have some brown stew chicken with rice and peas on your flight to Jamaica. We would make it convenient for the passenger to buy their meal at point of purchase when they buy their tickets. It’s a lofty goal but something that is very much a focus of ours”.

A lofty goal indeed, but one Thursday Food reckons Bowen is up to.