TWO friends — Claudius Tobias and Oswald Ayre — born and raised in Friendship Gap, St Mary, have turned their lifelong bond into a sustainable community business venture: the Boiling House.

The establishment is a small sugar cane juice shop, putting their spin on the boiling houses on sugar plantations in which cane juice was turned into sugar. Located at Friendship Gap, St Mary, the juice shop is owned and operated by the childhood friends who are now in their 70s.

Tobias and Ayre shared that they met in infant school, when they were just three years old. Over the years, they have shared many laughs and memories together, but it was a chipped tooth on a piece of sugar cane that started their entrepreneurial journey.

“We both grew up around sugar cane, and sugar cane was our thing. One day, the cane broke one of my teeth, so we decided to buy a small juicer — not for business but just to squeeze cane — so that we could have cane juice. Somebody asked us to sell them cane juice, and we decided to sell them; then people just kept coming and asking us to sell them,” Tobias told the Jamaica Observer.

He shared that he and Ayre were both retired and already had a plot of land on which they were growing sugar cane, so they thought a business would be a great idea to keep them occupied. Tobias said, at the height of the coronavirus pandemic in 2021, they rented a small space and started building the Boiling House.

“We developed our labels, we bought bottles, and from there on the business started to grow,” he shared.

Now, in addition to sugar cane juice, they offer five flavours of beverage: apple, guava, june plum, lemonade, and sorrel.

Tobias said he was a carpenter who left Jamaica in 1987 to maintain hospitals across the United States. It was a profession he enjoyed for almost 30 years, but always knew he wanted to come back home to “live more freely”. He told the Sunday Observer that he returned to Jamaica in 2016 and set up a greenhouse, but when things went south, he changed course to the Boiling House.

“I enjoy this more. One of the reasons is that I don’t like chemicals, and with the greenhouse it was just chemical, chemical. Now, I make my juice and I just enjoy it. Everything is natural — no preservatives, no sugar. We use a little sugar in only juice like sorrel because you can’t use sugar cane juice to sweeten sorrel or else it’s going to change it completely,” he explained.

He shared that business has been great, especially during the summertime when both local and international tourists stop by for a cool bottle of sugar cane juice. However, he said things ramped up recently after a customer posted a video that went viral on social media.

“We used to run the mill like every other day, and we had to run it two times a day. Some people would come and park on the roadside because they couldn’t find parking,” he said, smiling.

Tobias shared that he enjoys meeting new people and sharing his story, but he is even more excited to be doing it with someone he considers a brother.

“Our friendship means everything,” he said, adding that in all their time on Earth, they have never gone more than six months without speaking with each other.

Ayre told the Sunday Observer that even when Tobias migrated to the United States for work, he would visit often to stay in touch.

“The length of time is evidence of everything good…There are differences between us, but our differences don’t mean any difference to us, no matter what,” Ayre said about their friendship.

He noted that, together, they have built a community in Friendship Gap, often meeting up with other business owners and residents to host domino tournaments and football matches in the area. On the business side of things, he said that despite owning a sugar cane field, they purchase five per cent of their sugar cane from local farmers and have employed young men in the community.

“It’s all about local farming, local farmers, and supporting the people who work on the farm. Some days some part-time workers come in and really assist us to wash the sugar cane, because the cane needs a lot of care before we start the juicing,” he told the Sunday Observer.

Ayre pointed out, too, that they also donate sugar cane trash to pig farmers and use neglected fruits from trees in the area to make juice.

“This is a region for apples, mangoes, and a significant percentage of those fruits go to waste during their season. We thought that we would do our little bit and preserve some by refrigeration and then juice and store [them], so when you come it’s 100 per cent natural, no preservatives,” he said.

“It’s really a way to utilise all the fruits that we have and then to use the sugar cane as a sweetener. We still love sugar, we still love sweet things, but it’s better that we get the natural sugar than the processed,” he said, laughing.

As the Government works to crack down on the presence of sugary drinks in schools, he shared that they are also examining how they can make a difference in the schools in St Mary.

“A lot of people are talking about healthy living and a healthy lifestyle now…We have been giving samples to the schools with about seven or eight drinks, and so we have given samples to the schools in the Wag Water Valley area — about five schools — because we plan to start there,” said Ayre.

“Once we can break into that market, we will be able to create more employment and more healthy choices. We hope to expand as time goes on so that young people can take this and run with it, see the value in it, develop the thing, and continue to not use sugar in whatever they do,” he added.