JULIEN NEAVES
FOLLOWING the July 1990 attempted coup Adam Aboud lost his ladies' clothing business. When he returned to Trinidad from New York his father asked if he had any new business ideas, but he was deflated.
"I said, 'I don't want to open a business. I'm done. I don't want to go into business again.'"
His father asked him what he did every day in New York, and he replied he went to a bagel shop every day with a friend and had a coffee and a bagel. His father then asked how busy the bagel shop was and he told him it was very busy.
"He said, 'What about if you open a bagel shop?'"
It was that suggestion that led to the opening of Adam's Bagels which has been serving Maraval for the past 32 years.
Newsday met up with CEO Adam Aboud and his son Edmund, managing director of Adam's Gourmet Sauces Ltd and Adam's Bagels director, at the #15A Saddle Road location.
The place was bustling at the time of the interview with customers browsing in the shopping area and people seated in the restaurant waiting for their meals and drinks.
But business has not always been booming.
Aboud recalled he learned about making bagels at a New York bagel shop and started by making them in his mother's kitchen. He took his bagels to a Christmas bazaar at Hilton Trinidad, and they sold out in half an hour.
"People started calling (about the bagels). And that was the beginning."
He opened the bakery in 1993 but his bagels were not exactly selling like hot bread.
"I was the first and only bagel shop in Trinidad. I had to educate them. I'm still the only real bagel shop."
[caption id="attachment_1073219" align="alignnone" width="885"] Managing director of Adam's Gourmet Sauces Ltd Edmund Aboud, right, with his late grandmother Odette in 2017. -[/caption]
Aboud recalled when the business started bagels could not pay the bills. He telephoned his "oven man" and told him he needed to make something else. He was put in touch with the "mixer man" who gave him an Italian bread recipe which he still makes to this day. His mother, Odette, would bring down beef pies and baby pizzas.
"That's how we evolved into what you see here."
Edmund said his grandmother was a support structure to his father at the start of the business.
"(She) would oversee operations day to day. She was a massive part of it."
He said his family was sad to lose her in 2022.
"We have to take on the business, we have to carry on her legacy which was always keeping customers happy. She was a great team builder, and my father intends to take on that role."
Adam's gets saucy
Aboud said people kept asking for different menu items, like bagels and cream cheese or bagel with ham and eggs, so he began making other items. They then added a kitchen and added ham sandwiches and turkey on rye to the menu. He recalled his father helped him open the restaurant together with his wife, Jacqueline.
"With the restaurant came nicer things. Salads, soups. And we started making pepper sauce for the restaurant. Why buy pepper sauce?"
They also began makin
