a healthy option

A LOCAL entrepreneur is putting steps in place to add another healthy option on Barbadians’ plates.

 

Tonya Ifill of Carlesa’s Enterprises Inc. is carving out a niche for herself in the food industry, with her flour and pasta made from green bananas.

 

The businesswoman was one of the featured businesses at the just concluded Barbados Network Consultation, where her product including sauce, porridge and pasta caught the attention of Prime Minister the Right Honourable Freundel Stuart. This with her ten-week old baby Amir on her hip, whom she said is her greatest inspiration.

 

Ifill was one of the four people chosen to pursue a Certificate in Agro-processing at the Guyana School of Agriculture, as part of a bilateral arrangement between Barbados, through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, and Guyana.

 

There she experimented with sweet potato and brown rice flour, but felt like she could not return to Barbados using traditional ingredients.

 

“I researched green bananas and I saw the nutritional value and that’s how it started. It’s high in fibre so you use less flour. If you are baking normally if you are using regular flour you use two-thirds of this flour. It keeps you fuller longer and you don’t need as much. It also has potassium,” she said. She stressed that the flour is gluten free and does not contain eggs.

 

Her first display was at Girlfriend’s Expo, where she received a good response for her new product. However, she was unable to test her product at BMEX since she was close to her due date with baby Amir. 

 

The entrepreneur also received some much needed help from the Youth Entrepreneurship Scheme as it relates to printing of the labels and also some of her equipment.

 

She says over the next few months she will be seeking to expand her company and hopefully get it onto local supermarket shelves. She also wants to try different products as well.

 

Ifill recalled that her journey was not an easy, even picking up the crippling carpal tunnel syndrome in one of her hands during her pregnancy. As a result, she was unable to use the manual machine, but is hoping to get an electrical machine to facilitate the production process as soon as possible.

 

To all those persons, particularly mothers who may need some encouragement to carve out their own niche, she said. “ Some days you don’t feel like doing anything but you have to push yourself. Even when I was pregnant I worked all the way up. You have to tell yourself I am doing it for my child and motivate yourself to get up and do something,” she said. (JH)