IN the aftermath of Spur Tree Spices’ recent success in raising $335 million in its initial public offering (IPO), “Mohan” Jagnarine, as the company’s co-founder Harrinarine Jagnarine prefers to be called, sat with the Jamaica Observer to recall the beginnings of a company he hopes will become an icon of Jamaica’s manufacturing and exporting entities.

The story, though long, is interesting and points to many lessons current and aspiring entrepreneurs can learn from in going about creating wealth.

“Dashan, I want this story to be written down in a book,” said a beaming Jagnarine as he walked into the Jamaica Observer head office on December 28, 2021 to tell a story he calls “From Handsome Tree to Spur Tree.” That’s the working name for now, he says, for a book to come in which he plans to tell the story of Spur Tree Spices.

Handsome Tree is the name of the village in Mahaica, Demerara, Guyana, from which Jagnarine originally hails. He insists, however, he is 100 per cent Jamaican and had to prove that “over 10,000 times” to sceptical Jamaicans in the United States by showing his passport and driver’s licence at numerous demonstrations he’s had in various locations to promote his Spur Tree Jamaican Spices.

He however starts his story with a little background on himself.

“I came from Guyana to Jamaica in 1983 to work for a company in Golden Spring (St Andrew) called Caribbean Gum Limited. I worked with the company for two years and whilst I was there, I met my wife, who used to work with a bank… our company used to bank with the bank where she works, so that’s where I met my wife, got married, and the rest is history, as they say.”

Jagnarine, however, says he didn’t believe that job would earn him enough to start a family. To supplement income, he said he bought “a little wagon that looks like those hot dog carts”, which he towed with his wife’s car to Trinidad Terrace in New Kingston, St Andrew, to sell roti and curry every day.

This, he said, was the first bite from the entrepreneurial bug for him, with many customers telling him that “one day, you are going to be a very successful businessman”.

Sales, he said, were encouraging.

The journey from that cart to Spur Tree Spices had many iterations in-between, and all, Jagnarine contends, were critical in his push to start the seasoning company which will soon be listed on the Jamaica Stock Exchange.

It involves turning down the opportunity to open a restaurant shortly after doing roti and curry in New Kingston because he was averse to taking a loan he didn’t know how he would repay, to deciding to get a job in the “food business to learn the trade some more”.

That job took him to Chicken Supreme at its flagship Twin Gates Plaza, St Andrew location, where he was hired by Thalia Lyn as the manager.

“Chicken Supreme was small at the time, so I was human resource, janitor, manager, accountant…everything I was at that place there, because the company was small,” he said.

Chicken Supreme is now Island Grill.

Jagnarine said he was the man who introduced jerk to the menu, which was mainly “pollo tropical”, which is a citrus-marinated chicken. The story goes: “One day a woman tried to get me to buy jerk seasonings to make jerk chicken for the menu, but I couldn’t do it, because I can’t just change the menu. So, I took the sample and put it on the desk, like everybody else, but the woman kept calling me back and not to feel bad, I said, let me try this thing and give the staff.”

He said he marinated the chicken and gave the staff, starting with the cashiers first, who asked, ‘Why don’t we sell this, why don’t we sell this?’

“I said to myself, if the cashiers are saying that, and they are the ones facing the customers, then I ought to listen to them. Mrs Lyn, at the time, was away on vacation, and I decided to try some [to sell customers] without getting permission. But when Mrs Lyn came back and saw that it was a success — the sales were up 50 per cent — she was happy and that is how jerk was introduced on the menu of what we now call Island Grill,” Jagnarine told the Business Observer.

Jagnarine said he also sold jerk chicken at the various carnivals in Kingston each year where he developed the mantra that “if you believe in a product you have, then do it live, stand up in front of your product and represent it”.

He said he was selling at one of the carnivals when he was invited by the then Burger King franchisee to come work for the company, which was, at the time, setting up its New Kingston location. The experience there, he said, was valuable but too monotonic.

Eventually, around 1997, he was invited back to Island Grill, which was expanding and was rebranding from Chicken Supreme.

During the Football World Cup 1998 in France, he said he was at the Jamaica booth, as the only person selling jerk chicken in France, and it was a success. On his return to Jamaica, he rejoined Island Grill as operations manager. Dennis Hawkins, his business partner at Spur Tree Spices, was the general manager, and the current CEO of Spur Tree Spices, Albert Bailey, was the financial controller at Island Grill at the time.

But he said he didn’t stay long, and was hired by Golden Krust in New York by a man he never met.

“I don’t know who this man, but he heard about me and reached out to me and I went up to New York to work for him for two years,” Jagnarine said.

His heart, however, was not in New York and he returned to Jamaica to start a restaurant called Windies Grill with West Indies cricket legend Shivnarine Chanderpaul and businessman Anand James.

However, the break to start producing his own seasonings for sale started with a cousin opening a restaurant in New York called De Islands. Jagnarine said at the end of each day he would blend seasonings in the kitchen of his restaurant “with a little blender” and ship it to his cousin via the now-defunct Air Jamaica. He said that firmed up a belief he had that Jamaican wet seasonings could do well in New York and he had to ensure consistency in taste and supply to make it work.

“So I said, I am going to make all the seasonings these restaurants use — curry, jerk, oxtail, you name it — and I am going to do it scientifically, to ensure the taste is consistent,” he said.

The customers responded well, and it was growing.

Growth required him to find a bigger blender, which he procured from a company in Ohio, USA. The equipment was being shipped but was too big to fit in Jagnarine’s restaurant in Mandeville, Manchester. The search was therefore on for a place to base the equipment around Spur Tree in Manchester, which eventually gave the company its name. This was about 2006.

“In the process of seeking a location for the equipment, I had a dream of supplying hotels with a product I know had a consistent and good taste. I had a friend at GraceKennedy who I visited and asked to help [me] find customers and she helped me to put in a bid for Sandals Resorts to buy my seasonings. I told her, ‘I don’t care what price you put in the bid for, all I want to do is get in’,” Jagnarine said.

The bid was successful, and a purchase order for over $1 million came in while he had nowhere to set up the equipment to make the seasonings. But being determined not to lose the contract, he said he set up in a temporary location at Caribbean Flavours and Fragrances, off Spanish Town Road in St Andrew. The factory was owned then by his close friend Anand James, but has since been sold to Derrimon Trading.

During that time of fulfilling the Sandals order, he said he relocated to Maxfield Avenue and took a loss on his contract, because Hurricane Dean, in 2007, wiped out pepper supplies and sent prices surging from $20 per pound to $500 per pound in the matter of a few weeks. He said he didn’t change the price to Sandals because he couldn’t, and along with that order, he was seeing growth in the overseas orders.

New space was sought at Woodglen Avenue near Half-Way-Tree, St Andrew.

“At the time, I always wanted to sell to a place called Restaurant Depot and Jethro in New York, but it’s not easy to get through. I called every day and got a machine saying, ‘leave a message’, but I never left a message, I just kept calling. And one day a woman answered the phone and I made my presentation to her and she invited me to come and make a presentation. I left Jamaica the next day, made the presentation and the woman told me, ‘You need to adjust this and adjust that’, and so on, but she knew nothing about jerk. I came back to Jamaica, allowed two weeks to pass and went back with the same seasonings and told her, ‘I did everything you told me’, but I didn’t change a thing. I went back with the same exact product and she said, ‘This is perfect’. I don’t present seasonings, I present food, so I went and cook for her and she liked it — the same exact seasonings she told me to adjust,” he said.

That started a journey of getting the product distributed.

“I was travelling now to do cooking demonstrations all over New York to get the product sold. I took buses and trains, stayed at cousins; when one tired of me, I move on to another, but I was there cooking every day, because I want people to know how the product tastes, so they will buy it. I made sure the cashiers were the first to get, because once they like a product, they will tell the customers about it,” he shared.

During that time he had interesting encounters with Jamaicans.

“I’m there selling jerk seasonings, so once you doing jerk, you know Jamaicans are going to come. But when they come and hear my Guyanese accent they are like, ‘Big man, where you come from, you not Jamaican?’ So hear what I do, I always walk with mi passport. My passport is Jamaican and my driver’s licence. So when they start, I pull out mi passport and put it on the table and say, ‘Look in that. What it says? What country it comes from?’ Then I would take out my licence and say, ‘This mark Guyana or Trinidad?’ Now, if you convince Jamaicans that way, they know you not ginnalling them. But they will say, ‘Big man, it better taste good’.”

Those demonstrations were key in getting the product accepted and, he said, when people found out he, the owner of the company, was coming and cooking and giving samples, it made it more acceptable for them.

The journey, though, had tough days. Sometimes he had to book a motel and save the eggs from breakfast for lunch and dinner, because he didn’t have enough money. He also depended a lot on credit cards, surviving by ensuring he paid at least the minimum charge. At times, he said he felt like giving up, because he was doing this business and not able to earn from it, going seven years without a salary, leaving most of the burden of running the household on his wife, whom he said encouraged him a lot, though sometimes she had questions about the viability of the company itself.

“So, to help with cash, I opened a restaurant in Half-Way-Tree, but had to give up the restaurant because I was almost always in New York doing demonstrations, to get the products sold.”

For young entrepreneurs looking on, Jagnarine advises that success can be attained “if you don’t give up, and have belief in what you are doing”.

“One day one of my cousins came to a demonstration with me and saw me cooking and trying to sell one-one bottle of seasonings and said if I find another business he would help me. My cousins then were saying, he struggling to build a business and won’t make it,” Jagnarine told the Business Observer.

The turning point for Spur Tree was, however, when they were going to do a business plan to borrow money. Jagnarine said by this time Dennis Hawkins had joined the business. A chance meeting with Albert Bailey brought him into the business at the time. Also, the business was about to be inspected by the US Food and Drug Administration to ensure the products were being produced up to standard, but the Woodglen location was never going to be passed because it was too small.

Jagnarine said he went to the Factories Corporation of Jamaica but faced bureaucratic hurdles and started appealing to anyone who would listen to him to get a space to set up. That plea was heard by Metry Seaga, now chairman of Spur Tree Spices, who took the issue to then Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller, who asked that he get the factory space he needed. That is how he got to the Garmex Freezone in Kingston where the company is now headquartered.

As for Bailey, Jagnarine said he asked him to join the company, but Bailey had just received an offer he could not match.

However, Bailey eventually decided to join after going through the business plan, taking less money and the offer for a stake in the business. Bailey is now the second biggest shareholder in Spur Tree Spices with 16.76 per cent of the shares valued at over $280 million.

“I shared with him my passion to get the product exported and after going through the business plan, I told him he would be the CEO because I can’t do it [implement the business plan] and Dennis didn’t want to do it,” Jagnarine shared.

He said having partners was challenging, but they always made sure the business came first.

“I could have held all the company for myself and struggle with it, but 100 per cent of zero is zero and 50 per cent of 100 is 50,” Jagnarine said, stressing the value of getting the right partners in business and encouraging young entrepreneurs to, where possible, not try to go it alone.

“Try to choose partners with different skill sets, and ensure you have trust. It’s like Greenidge and Haynes,” he said referring to the fearsome West Indies opening batsmen from the late 1970s into the 1980s.

Jagnarine himself owns 34.32 per cent of the business, a stake valued more than $575 million according to the company’s prospectus. Hawkins has since exited the company for retirement, but before the IPO, he had shares which, had he kept them, would have been valued at $374 million.

As he looks on his company, going public, making 95 per cent of its sales from overseas, and seeing the struggles that were endured to get where he is now, Jagnarine beams with pride.

“People ask me every day if I have no other shirt, because everywhere I go, I only wear Spur Tree Spices shirts. Even my wife asks me if I have no other shirts, but I wear them because it brings people to me to ask me a story, and I love telling my story,” he said. “A big motivator for me is Gary ‘Butch’ Hendrickson, who put his personal money behind my brand, and others to market it and I said I couldn’t fail this man.”

With the IPO a success, and the company getting ready to list, Jagnarine reiterated, “Dashan, I am so proud of the journey and I want to tell my story to inspire another generation of Jamaican entrepreneurs.”