Richard's Bake and Shark comes to St James

Travellers in search of fresh bake and shark will no longer have to travel to the north coast to satisfy their appetites as Richard's Bake and Shark made history on Thursday with the opening of its first outlet outside their flagship Maracas Bay restaurant.

Newsday visited the new outlet along the Western Main Road, St James, and spoke to owner Richard Ferguson, who said while he considered the idea of branching outside of Maracas for years, the covid19 pandemic gave him the opportunity to take action.

Ferguson said the franchise, which has been a staple for Maracas beachgoers for almost 40 years, has been highly sought after outside of the beach and was happy to open his restaurants in a new market.

"We have been catering for all-inclusive fetes for years so coming into the city is not new to us. What is new to us is having a stationary restaurant and we decided to bring a little bit of Maracas to the city.

"I really want to thank my father because we've been doing this business for 38 years and he always encouraged me to branch out because our business is very seasonal which is from January to August, when school reopens in September things get really slow for us."

Ferguson's business-partner, Kurt Scotland also said the opening of the restaurant was a means of capitalising off of closed beaches during continued stay-at-home regulations.

"I have been approaching him for years and he (Ferguson) was always sceptical about leaving his comfort zone but, lo and behold, here came covid19 that closed the beaches, a lot of revenue was lost so we had to look for new and innovative ideas so this presented the right opportunity for us to bring this to fruition."

Scotland said the decision to open the outlet in St James was not by chance as they wanted to distance themselves from competitive streets like Ariapita Avenue, making Richard's more easily distinguishable from nearby restaurants.

He also said, despite only opening at 10 am on Thursday, they had already served almost 100 customers by midday.

In an effort to re-create the traditional Maracas atmosphere, Ferguson said the furniture and condiments stations were arranged as a replica of the original Richard's Bake and Shark restaurant.

The restaurant would be open from Monday to Saturday from 10 am to 7 pm and will adhere to public health regulations put forward by the government which includes a mandatory mask policy, physical distancing markers and sanitising stations at the restaurant's entry.