Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery and Grill

Menu

The restaurants serve mild and hot Jamaican patties, jerk chicken, jerk fish, dumplings, steamed yams, and curried meat dishes. Items served include callaloo (Caribbean greens) and ackee. They are also known for coconut breads, cakes and traditional dense white breads, called hardough breads. Bulla cakes, duck bread, rock cake, gizzada and carrot cake are also served.

In 1998 the company produced 25 million flaky burnt-orange patties on assembly lines at its main facility. The restaurants do a lot of take-out business, as the patties are portable, and also distributes to supermarkets in 30 states. Offerings include beef patty, vegetable patty, spicy beef and cheese patty, soy patty, oxtail, curried goat, brown stew chicken, roti filled with curried meat or vegetables, and "coco" bread.

West Indian Community

The eateries have drawn interest from the West Indian community Many of its original franchises were opened by nurses, and many stores are opened near hospitals where many workers are West Indian with Caribbean heritage.

The chain started out serving Caribbean immigrants, but customers now include Americans. The type of food served is "becoming more and more familiar to Americans thanks to holidays they take in Aruba, Jamaica, or Trinidad and Tobago, or through meeting at work people from these islands and others." There are plans to open an additional 250 stores over the next five years in the U.S., Europe, Canada, and the Caribbean.

Barbadian singer Rihanna visits the "Caribbean fast food spot." Jamaica's ambassador to the United States was present for the opening of the chain's fifth store in Atlanta, Georgia. Offerings include nine varieties of Jamaican patties. Core customers come from Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, and Haiti.

Corporate growth

The parent company is also involved in the financial services industry. The family running the business hope to add the Jamaican patty to the list of American ethnic fast foods alongside the Italian pizza slice, Jewish bagel, and the Chinese noodle. The company uses a rising sun logo and has a city contract to serve lunches to prison inmates and schoolchildren. Hawthorne came to New York in 1981 and graduated from Bronx Community College before working as an accountant with the New York Police Department for nine years. Nine brothers and sisters are involved in the family business.

History

To open its first restaurant, the family pooled $107,000, "using the Caribbean concept of susu, whereby everyone pitched in $100 a week to raise start-up money after banks refused them a loan."

Operations

The restaurants do mostly take-out and have limited seating. The decor is decorated in bright "sunny" yellow and orange tiles. Competing patty producers include Tower Isles Frozen Foods in Bedford-Stuyvesant, which sells more than 100,000 patties a day to supermarkets, convenience stores, delis and pizza shops that bake them on site, and Caribbean Food Delights, which makes 250,000 a day at a factory in Tappan, N.Y. "for sale at major supermarkets and warehouse chains, including Costco, Wal-Mart and Pathmark." In August 2016, The company announced plans to move and consolidate all its operations to Orangeburg, New York, near the Caribbean Food Delights location.