John Anderson and his wife Desrene Grant-Anderson own the DLE Café at the Fairview Shopping Centre in Montego Bay, where the acronym DLE in the restaurant’s name stands for Divine Living Essentials. Ask them what business they are in and they will tell you “the wellness business” because of their specialisation in healthy food. But DLE Café is just the latest evolution of a wellness business that had nothing to do with food in the beginning.

It was Desrene Grant-Anderson’s desire to find healthy options for her natural hair that initially focused their business on haircare, skincare, and spa products. Her striking afro drew attention, prompting people to inquire about her haircare regimen. She began sharing her use of natural and organic products, which led to requests for her to procure these products for others.

“She started getting the products and selling them back,” John Anderson related. “It started out with just, like, shea butter and soaps until it evolved into a complete line. And then more products kept adding to it until she wanted to offer a wellness care and spa service.”

This led to the creation of Divine Living Essentials in 2013.

After establishing this organic haircare and skincare business at a shopping complex on Gloucester Avenue, the couple received valuable input from a client suggesting they explore the idea of offering organic coffee to customers while they waited for their products. Soon after, another customer suggested they introduce smoothies to their menu.

“So my wife did our research and we started playing around with our own recipes and then we started offering one or two smoothies,” Anderson explained. “We paired them with a jerk chicken wrap and salads.”

This led to the idea of a smoothie bar concept and in 2015 the Andersons moved to a larger space within the shopping complex where they developed a menu featuring over 30 smoothies in different categories.

“The word got out and people kept coming for the smoothies and not so much the haircare [and] skincare products anymore,” Anderson recalled. “So because the smoothies are natural and organic with no fillers, no sugars and no additives, people started relating positive health results from drinking them.”

Around two years after they started the smoothie business, another customer suggested to Divine Living Essentials that they should consider relocating to the Fairview Shopping Centre.

In 2017, the couple secured a business space across town at Fairview and decided to rebrand the business, offering a full-blown menu of smoothies and food.

“We included wraps, salads, paninis, flat pizzas, burgers, sides and a complete menu,” Anderson said. “We rebranded the business DLE Café.”

Despite minimal marketing efforts, word-of-mouth recommendations from their loyal customers helped spread the news, especially among those working in the surrounding area, bringing in a new wave of patrons.

Word-of-mouth marketing continued to yield results but the café still eventually turned to an outside company to manage their social media accounts, allowing them to engage with a broader audience and showcase their offerings to more potential customers.

Since the new direction of the business in 2017 it has become involved in health-related activities and events collaborating with various companies and organisations in the immediate area for initiatives such as health fairs, wellness talks, meetings and conferences.

DLE Café sets up booths and tables at outside events as well as hosts wellness conferences at the café.

The company also offers its own wellness talks and seminars, particularly within nearby call centres in the outsourcing industry. These talks focus on specific health topics such as using natural and organic ingredients to improve health, and DLE Café often sets up smoothie stations to provide nutritious options to employees.

The couple envisions expanding the company’s presence to major towns across Jamaica, with Kingston being the next destination.

“We have identified the location in Kingston and we’re in the process of signing the lease,” Anderson informed.

This expansion aligns with the company’s mission to provide healthy alternatives to combat lifestyle diseases and meet the growing need for wellness options.

Also, in the same way that they evolved from a spa to a restaurant, they have ambitious plans to expand beyond the restaurant business. The vision includes several other ventures and concepts, including a bakery and daily tours related to a farm-to-plate concept.

“So, as my wife would say, all of these ventures or concepts are tentacles, so they would be like the spokes of a wheel,” the restaurant operator explained. “You have the hub which is the café and then the other businesses. The other things are coming off of it and feeding back into the café.”

Anderson emphasises that the values at the heart of the business are “biblical principles” of wellness and that DLE Café is a “kingdom brand”. Communicating this concept to customers is very important and customer service representatives are called guest engagement ambassadors.

“It is more than just taking an order in DLE Café,” Anderson insisted. “We focus on selling an experience, a good experience. Food is what we serve, but the experience is what we sell.”