Raphael John-Lall

De­spite the chal­lenges that mi­grants are fac­ing in the Unit­ed States, Na­tal­ie Lam­ming, who was born in T&T and owns busi­ness­es in Brook­lyn, New York en­cour­ages T&T na­tion­als at home and those abroad to nev­er give up on their dreams of open­ing a busi­ness.

Lam­ming, who grew up in Di­a­mond Vale, Diego Mar­tin, told the Busi­ness Guardian that she now owns two restau­rants in Brook­lyn, New York.

The most re­cent one, which is a Caribbean-flavoured piz­za shop was opened last Oc­to­ber.

Lam­ming is al­so the first grand­daugh­ter of fa­mous Bar­ba­di­an nov­el­ist, es­say­ist and po­et who died in 2022.

She left T&T in 1996 and be­gan to pur­sue a lib­er­al arts de­gree at col­lege in the US. When she re­alised it was not what she want­ed in life, she ven­tured in­to the restau­rant in­dus­try, work­ing at all lev­els from a wait­ress to the man­age­ment po­si­tions.

“I ar­rived here at age 18 and some point I re­alised that col­lege was not for me. I was here as an im­mi­grant for a lit­tle while and I start­ed my first job work­ing in the restau­rant in­dus­try. That is all I ba­si­cal­ly know, even though I did not think when I left T&T I would be in that in­dus­try. I went to Bish­op Anstey High School. In New York, you do what you have to do to sur­vive and the mon­ey was good.”

She be­lieves that the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah is cen­tral to cul­ture in Port-of-Spain and T&T, so nat­u­ral­ly she named her first restau­rant af­ter it.

“I opened my first restau­rant Sa­van­nah in 2012. My first restau­rant af­ter be­ing in the in­dus­try from 1996. I fi­nal­ly de­cid­ed that I want­ed to start on my own. I gave it that name as it rep­re­sent­ed the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain. I went to Bish­ops, my grand­moth­er lived in Bel­mont, my mom worked on Jern­ing­ham Av­enue. We have our Car­ni­val there, the food is there. I tell peo­ple, the Sa­van­nah is to Trinidad what Cen­tral Park is to New York.”

De­spite the chal­lenges she faced, she said she at­tained her dream of get­ting the restau­rant off the ground.

“It was not 100 per cent easy to open a restau­rant in New York. This is not take-out food that I am do­ing, this is din­ing in. You want to serve peo­ple but in a trendy way. It was not like a rum shop vibe. It was trendy. I start­ed off do­ing events and throw­ing par­ties in Brook­lyn. Right now, they claim I am the biggest fe­male pro­mot­er in Brook­lyn and that is how I was able to get any kind of in­come for those busi­ness­es. I have worked with many artistes from T&T such as Na­dia Bat­son and De­von ‘Lyrikal’ Mar­tin. I do four to five huge events an­nu­al­ly that the West In­di­an com­mu­ni­ty looks for­ward to. That orig­i­nal restau­rant we end­ed up clos­ing and that is how I end­ed up with this new one Sa­van­nah Spice which we opened about three years ago.”

Two years ago, she got mar­ried to her Grena­di­an hus­band who is al­so in­volved in the restau­rant and ser­vice in­dus­try and T&T and Grena­di­an dish­es in­flu­ence the menus at her restau­rants.

“When I met my hus­band, he was part of the in­dus­try and we work as a fam­i­ly. He in­tro­duced me to Grena­di­an cul­ture and as much as I rep­re­sent T&T cul­ture, my grand­fa­ther is a West In­di­an au­thor, George Lam­ming and he has al­ways pound­ed in my head that he be­lieves that the Caribbean should be one house. So, you get callal­loo in an iron pot. We serve oil down every day. We serve pholourie, we fuse things. We do ox tail, we do cur­ry and we fuse all and serve them in a trendy way. This Sa­van­nah Spice is very suc­cess­ful in the Brook­lyn area.”

Giv­en the suc­cess­es of her events busi­ness and her Caribbean-themed restau­rant, she de­cid­ed to in­vest in­to a new restau­rant for her 11-year-old son which was opened last Oc­to­ber.

Named af­ter her son Se­bas­t­ian, it is a piz­za shop called “Se­bas­t­ian's Spices and Slices” al­so op­er­at­ing in Brook­lyn.

“It is a cus­tomised Caribbean piz­za and we al­so spe­cialise in cus­tomised lasagna and mac­a­roni pies. So, you can get lasagna and ox tail or stewed chick­en. This par­tic­u­lar shop, I opened it for my 11-year-old son. As a busi­ness own­er, my son is al­ways at­tached to me and I told him he should not work for any­one but he should be self-em­ployed.”

She ex­plained the busi­ness process in open­ing the lat­est piz­za shop.

“I end­ed up call­ing my bro­ker, who found me a space. I sur­prised my son on his tenth birth­day. I se­cured a 10-year lease. I in­cor­po­rat­ed him in every­thing from the con­struc­tion to the lo­go. The oth­er cul­tures do it so as Caribbean peo­ple, we need to in­clude fam­i­lies and kids in­to our busi­ness­es. I took out a 10-year lease so when he reach­es 16 years I can start pay­ing him a cheque. Al­so, when he reach­es a cer­tain age, I can add him to the lease and I could add him on the cor­po­ra­tion. With the cor­po­ra­tion, by the time he reach­es 18 and if he de­cides to open an­oth­er busi­ness and he wants to be a bar­ber, he can use that same space to open the busi­ness.”

With her many years ex­pe­ri­ence in man­ag­ing busi­ness­es, she gives the ad­vice that open­ing a busi­ness­es is tak­ing a risk.

“What­ev­er the out­come of this busi­ness, I would have mem­o­ries and my son would learn life lessons.”

Mi­grant chal­lenges

Lam­ming’s suc­cess come at a time, when new US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump is on a dri­ve to de­port il­le­gal mi­grants back to their home coun­tries in­clud­ing T&T and the Caribbean.

Giv­en these re­al­i­ties, she has ad­vice for T&T na­tion­als at home and those who will con­tin­ue to live and work in the US.

“I nev­er hid the fact that I was an il­le­gal mi­grant at one time. That was many years ago. I wor­ry about those who are in that po­si­tion now. There are a lot of peo­ple who are here work­ing hard and I could on­ly imag­ine how they are feel­ing. It is an un­set­tling feel­ing. Some­times we would get op­por­tu­ni­ties in the US that we may not get at home. I would hope that any­one who has to re­turn home that they are able to take the op­por­tu­ni­ties from the US be­cause sur­viv­ing here is not easy. So, the things they did to make mon­ey up here they could trans­fer that back home and make some­thing.”

One of the is­sues that Pres­i­dent Trump touched on that helped his vic­to­ry was the in­fla­tion rate and widen­ing gap be­tween the rich and poor in the US.

De­spite the chal­leng­ing eco­nom­ic cli­mate in the U.S. and glob­al­ly, Lam­ming ex­plained why she has sur­vived in the world of busi­ness.

“I start­ed in 1996 and look at where we are now. I have worked at the busi­ness on the cor­ner of the hood. I’ve worked in fast food, I’ve done it all. I’ve nev­er felt this way be­fore. In a busi­ness, there are ups and downs. The econ­o­my has seen a shift re­cent­ly. This had me a lit­tle dis­heart­ened for a while, but this is life and there will al­ways be these types of shifts.

“You have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as a busi­ness own­er to em­ploy­ees and oth­er peo­ple de­pend­ing on you. A lot of peo­ple are sink­ing in the shift and I’m see­ing it with col­leagues who have busi­ness­es. There are no more rules, we live in a new world. You have to do new things and ad­just. For ex­am­ple, I nev­er sold this prod­uct in my busi­ness but I may have to sell it how. They used to say the busi­ness own­er should stay in the back and let the em­ploy­ees face cus­tomers but now peo­ple want to see who they are spend­ing their mon­ey with.”