When Marcia Hawthorne and Shawn French were browsing for a spot to open their seventh Golden Krust restaurant, they wanted somewhere that would suit the down-home menu of the famous eatery.

The couple settled on Stratford, Connecticut, a small New England town with strong ties to the United States aircraft industry. Golden Krust opened its doors there six months ago and have no regrets.

“The customers love the variety and familiarity of the foods that we make. Some of the menu items, such as chicken-back and ackee, mackerel run-down, curried chicken foot, Bulgar, turkey neck, are all foods that they relate to, as that brings them back to their childhood days in Jamaica,” said Hawthorne. “At our Golden Krust stores, we serve over 40 varieties of menu items daily. Jerk chicken and shrimp pasta, oxtail, curry goat, peppered shrimp, stew peas and salmon are just a part of our extensive line-up.”

Hawthorne is a niece of Lowell Hawthorne, the Jamaican businessman who started Golden Krust in The Bronx, New York in 1989. Its folksy menu caught on quickly with New York City’s huge West Indian community, and led Hawthorne to open stores in major American cities like Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston and Philadelphia.

Marcia Hawthorne was born in the United States while French migrated to that country in his teens. She has been in the food industry since Golden Krust started 34 years ago while he joined in 2003.

They operate four Golden Krust stores in The Bronx, as well as outlets in Teaneck, New Jersey and Tamarac, Florida. Their latest venture has 20 employees, located in a town with just over 52,000 people, according to the 2020 United States census.

For many years, the Stratford economy has been driven by the aircraft/helicopter industry. Since 1959, Sigorsky Aircraft, based in the town, has built Marine One, official helicopter for the US president.

With Golden Krust, Hawthorne and French are aiming to diversify Stratford’s commercial sector. She admits achieving that may not be easy.

“There have been a lot of challenges, maybe too much to mention but if I were to try encompass most of them in a short description, I would say that the most challenging is remaining current and relevant,” she said. “Things and times are constantly changing along with people relocating, while a new generation settles in. We cannot ever become complacent with our current or prior successes. We always strive to be better than what we were the day before.”