A single parent with three sons, Sharda Deolall resides on the West Bank Demerara. From her home she established Sharda’s Catering in 2013. For the past seven years she has been ‘turning out’ a range of gastronomic delights…cakes, pastries, finger foods, bread and black pudding. Sharda’s Catering also offers a range of what one might call good, old-fashioned Guyanese meals including fried rice, cook up rice, roti and dhal puri.
When we spoke with Sharda earlier this week she was preoccupied with Christmas and inevitably with the culinary side of the season. Cakes, she says, are good sellers, one pound packages of Black Cake, Fruit Cake and Sponge Cake. The asking prices are $6,000, $5,000 and $4,000, respectively. For the nostalgic foodies she is preparing limited quantities of aniseed bread…the asking price? $500 per loaf.
Sharda’s current entrepreneurial pursuits derive from having grown up in a home where cooking, including baking, was a serious income-earning activity. She talks about her father, Cecil Deolall, whose pursuits had earned him the title ‘Baker.’ He baked and her mother sold. Cecil had another ‘hustle.’ He sold cooked food on Sheriff Street. She talks about her father as if to make the point that she was tutored by the best.
As a teenager she was introduced to cooking, including baking. Simultaneously, she was eased into the entrepreneurial side of the pursuit having been forced to leave school on account of the family’s financial circumstances. The money-earning preoccupation compelled her to try her hand elsewhere. At intervals she worked as a salesgirl, eventually returning to ‘first base’ – cooking.
Her catering pursuits began with modest jobs for friends. It felt good, pleasing her customers and earning, simultaneously. She recalls the transition to the ‘bigger league.’ That was when she decided that she would anchor her livelihood to cooking.
Having visited a number of snackettes, pleasing responses to offering her culinary services generated gradual growth.
Following her trial and error experiences Sharda moved to Parfait Harmonie on the West Bank of Demerara, in 2018. Business took a tumble. The difference between production costs and what the business houses were prepared to pay was simply too wide to make ‘business sense.’
That was the beginning of a slide that persisted until earlier this year when she decided to market her services on social media, specifically, Facebook. The response, she says, was sufficiently encouraging to cause her to begin again. At the end of November she had earned $50,000, not a ‘King’s ransom’ but sufficient to encourage her to persevere.
Customers are coming in, mostly from Georgetown and that has its particular challenges. Delivery costs keep pushing returns down. Large deliveries give rise to ‘special hire’ costs. Sharda is now focused on securing her own transportation. Meanwhile, when there are large orders to be filled she relies on the ‘muscle’ of her two older sons to support her own effort.
Understandably, the festive season couldn’t come too soon for Sharda. There is work to be done to satisfy the requirements of the various functions and seasonal ‘hangouts. Some of those orders have already begun to arrive at her doorstep and there are, she hopes, several more to come. She has steeled herself to ‘cook up a storm’ this Christmas.
Sharda Deolall can be contacted on telephone number 666-8673.
