Fay­ola K J Fras­er

An en­tre­pre­neur, ad­vo­cate for lo­cal food sys­tems, and co-founder of sev­er­al suc­cess­ful busi­ness­es, Rachel Re­nie-Gon­za­les has been recog­nised as one of the An­tho­ny N Sab­ga 2025 Lau­re­ates for en­tre­pre­neur­ship. Re­nie-Gon­za­les has co-found­ed sev­er­al suc­cess­ful busi­ness­es, in­clud­ing D Mar­ket Movers Ltd, Farm & Func­tion TT, and Mar­ket Movers De­sign. Re­nie-Gon­za­les’ “Will Work For Food” mantra un­der­lines her fo­cus on pro­mot­ing farm-to-ta­ble ini­tia­tives, sup­port­ing lo­cal farm­ers, and cre­at­ing val­ue-added prod­ucts from lo­cal in­gre­di­ents.

Born in East Port-of-Spain and raised in Tu­na­puna, from a young age, Re­nie-Gon­za­les was ex­posed to gar­den­ing, and her fam­i­ly would, on a small scale, grow their own food in their back­yard gar­den.

She at­tend­ed Prov­i­dence Girls’ School and went on to Holy Name Con­vent in Form Six, where many of her age­mates were sit­ting the SAT ex­am­i­na­tions and prepar­ing to pur­sue ter­tiary-lev­el stud­ies abroad. Un­be­knownst to her par­ents, who ex­pect­ed her to stay in T&T and at­tend the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Re­nie-Gon­za­les sat the SAT ex­ams, ap­plied to col­leges abroad, and end­ed up at­tend­ing the City Col­lege of New York, where she pur­sued In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.

Be­fore go­ing to uni­ver­si­ty, Re­nie-Gon­za­les start­ed work­ing at Re­pub­lic Bank, where she met who was to be her even­tu­al busi­ness part­ner, David Thomas. Thomas’ broth­ers were fish­er­men, and Re­nie-Gon­za­les’ broth­er was a farmer, and they both brought of­fer­ings of fish and sea­son­ings to work to share among their col­leagues.

Ig­nit­ed by what may have been her first spark of en­tre­pre­neur­ial, in­no­v­a­tive think­ing, Re­nie-Gon­za­les and Thomas de­cid­ed to com­bine ef­forts, bun­dle the fish and sea­son­ing, and sell them to their col­leagues in the bank.

When she was trans­ferred from the night to the day shift at the bank, which be­came high­ly work in­ten­sive, she left the bank for high­er ed­u­ca­tion, not want­i­ng to “get stuck there.”

The en­tre­pre­neur­ial pair kept in con­tact dur­ing her time at uni­ver­si­ty abroad, and Re­nie-Gon­za­les kept her nose to the ground, scout­ing ideas that were suc­cess­ful in the US, which could be trans­lat­ed to a Trinida­di­an con­text.

She sug­gest­ed the idea of de­liv­er­ing gro­ceries that were or­dered on­line to Thomas, in­clud­ing fish and veg­eta­bles, and thus, “D’ Mar­ket Movers” was born.

When Re­nie-Gon­za­les re­turned home, ini­tial­ly with ideas of be­ing em­ployed at a UN agency fol­low­ing her course of study, she was even­tu­al­ly con­vinced by Thomas to get back in­to busi­ness with him.

“That’s pret­ty much how I start­ed on my en­tre­pre­neur­ial jour­ney,” she says, as she was not suc­cess­ful at se­cur­ing a UN job. “I was un­em­ployed and un­der­em­ployed.”

In Feb­ru­ary 2009, they of­fi­cial­ly reg­is­tered D’ Mar­ket Movers and be­gan push­ing it out through con­tacts in the bank along with fam­i­ly and friends. In those ear­ly days, they utilised a jot form to take or­ders and worked from her moth­er’s gallery, fill­ing or­ders for less than 20 peo­ple and fac­ing nu­mer­ous re­jec­tions for start-up cap­i­tal from fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions.

Re­nie-Gon­za­les, seek­ing ways to be­come more suc­cess­ful, buried her­self in train­ing pro­grammes of­fered by the Na­tion­al En­tre­pre­neur­ship De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Ltd (NED­CO) and even­tu­al­ly re­ceived a start-up loan of $10,000 from the Youth Busi­ness of Trinidad and To­ba­go (YBTT). She re­flect­ed on the chal­leng­ing ear­ly days of en­tre­pre­neur­ship, where she and her busi­ness part­ner were re­spon­si­ble for every as­pect of their busi­ness. They han­dled tasks such as col­lect­ing pro­duce, pack­ag­ing, de­liv­ery, com­mu­ni­cat­ing with cus­tomers, and plan­ning for busi­ness growth. Dur­ing this time, they faced scep­ti­cism and un­cer­tain­ty, with lit­tle out­side sup­port, mak­ing the jour­ney even more dif­fi­cult.

Re­nie-Gon­za­les be­gan build­ing a web­site for cus­tomers to view the prod­ucts and em­bed­ded the jot form. Even­tu­al­ly, with these changes, the busi­ness be­gan to grow. A piv­otal mo­ment that changed the course of her jour­ney was when one of their cus­tomers, whose hus­band was di­ag­nosed with can­cer, asked for a new prod­uct—pre-cut and frozen fruits—that she could use to pre­pare smooth­ies.

“Even­tu­al­ly, we got a big­ger com­mer­cial space, did more fruit cut­ting, and launched Farm and Func­tion.”

Re­al­is­ing that this new prod­uct was a way to not on­ly sat­is­fy cus­tomers’ chang­ing needs but al­so re­duce food wastage from over­ripe fruits, they in­tro­duced Farm and Func­tion to re­tail out­lets.

At the time, the on­ly frozen fruits that re­tailed in su­per­mar­kets were for­eign fruits, such as berries, so in­tro­duc­ing paw paw, pas­sion fruit, man­go, gua­va, and oth­ers was a wel­come in­clu­sion and pro­vid­ed greater op­por­tu­ni­ty for lo­cal fruit farm­ers.

At present, Farm and Func­tion ex­ports across the Caribbean to coun­tries in­clud­ing Do­mini­ca and Bar­ba­dos.

This con­cept of sus­tain­abil­i­ty is at the core of Re­nie-Gon­za­les’ busi­ness­es. She works close­ly with farm­ers, has cre­at­ed a farm-to-ta­ble din­ner ex­pe­ri­ence—“The Mov­ing Ta­ble”—to ed­u­cate con­sumers about where their food comes from, and com­posts all her or­gan­ic mat­ter (food waste), which is then giv­en to farm­ers.

She has al­so de­vel­oped a busi­ness, “Mar­ket Movers De­sign”, which seeks to en­cour­age fi­nan­cial sus­tain­abil­i­ty and in­cor­po­ra­tion of SMEs in­to the wider mar­ket. Mar­ket Movers De­sign helps SMEs with brand­ing, pack­ag­ing de­sign, mar­ketabil­i­ty, and com­pli­ance, giv­ing them an op­por­tu­ni­ty to grow and scale their busi­ness­es.

Re­nie-Gon­za­les was the re­cip­i­ent of the Ernst & Young Emerg­ing En­tre­pre­neur of the Year award in 2016 and, in what she de­scribes as a “full cir­cle mo­ment,” serves as a men­tor and di­rec­tor at the YBTT (where she re­ceived her first start­up loan).

Her pas­sion for not on­ly her own en­tre­pre­neur­ship jour­ney, but sup­port­ing the jour­ney of oth­ers is ap­par­ent, as she en­cour­ages young en­tre­pre­neurs to “love your busi­ness, but don’t fall in love with it.”

She urges, “Be open to im­prove­ment and don’t miss op­por­tu­ni­ties to re­ceive feed­back.”

Re­ly­ing on her busi­ness part­ner, hus­band and her vil­lage has al­so been cru­cial in her en­tre­pre­neur­ial growth.

As a young busi­ness­woman, she is al­ways look­ing to the next step, and af­ter 16 years in D’ Mar­ket Movers, she in­di­cat­ed that con­tin­u­al growth and in­no­va­tion are in­te­gral.

Re­nie-Gon­za­les is a well-de­serv­ing lau­re­ate who con­tin­ues to fos­ter a cul­ture of food se­cu­ri­ty in the re­gion, cham­pi­oning lo­cal food pro­duc­tion as a core pil­lar of our coun­try’s growth and de­vel­op­ment.