The Tribune

By ANNELIA NIXON

Tribune Business Reporter

anixon@tribunemedia.net

A BAHAMIAN Senator yesterday revealed she was forced to pay rent on an unopened business, postpone hiring staff and ultimately lost a key employee after her latest restaurant venture was delayed as she acknowledged the need for streamlined regulatory approvals.

D’Asante Small, also owner of Da Bush Cook, Oasis Bar & Bistro and the Palmdale Pub, agreed that inefficient government processes remain one of the biggest barriers to business expansion despite increasing public investment in small business grants and loans. "It's not legislation," Ms Small said "I think it's a lot of our processes that are hindering some business advancement and growth. So the Business Licence process is very long, unnecessarily. As a small business that owns a bar now, or have to go through the new liquor licence process, it's like extra steps."

Ms Small said policymakers must do more to consult small business operators before implementing regulatory changes. "We have to stop making decisions at a government level without ensuring that small businesses are in the room and able to advise," she said.

Describing her own experience, she said regulatory delays postponed the opening of Palmdale Pub. "For me, for example, we would have invested in our new space, Palmdale Pub, from last year September,” Ms Small said.  “We were ready. We weren't able to open until last week, so that meant paying rent, that meant holding off on staff. I lost an excellent bartender because we were waiting. But we were trying to be as compliant as possible. So my advocacy is those frustrations."

Beyond regulatory reform, Ms Small argued that government support should go well beyond helping entrepreneurs launch businesses. "My next level of advocacy is that we can't just fund businesses,” she said. “We have to create an environment that sustains them.

"You would find more and more, straight across the board, we are investing a lot in businesses, a lot of small business grants, loans, etc. But for me, as someone who's already bought the equipment, that already has the staff, I need more access to resources."

Ms Small believes one of the biggest gaps is access to operational knowledge from established hospitality operators. Pointing to the limited number of large-scale Bahamian-owned restaurants, she said entrepreneurs would benefit from structured industry partnerships that provide behind-the-scenes management training rather than only front-line hospitality experience.

"My husband and I are one of the few Bahamian black-owned restaurant brands at this level,” she said. “I'm talking about a 200-seater restaurant. What I do need is if Atlantis would offer some type of insight training on logistics in a way that we would never get it, [so we] would understand how to run a 200-seater restaurant."

Ms Small said the industry currently offers opportunities to learn as servers or cooks, but provides few avenues for entrepreneurs to gain exposure to the operational and logistical aspects of managing large hospitality businesses.

"We have to do more where our international businesses are pouring back in, training our people," Ms Small said. She argued such collaboration would benefit the wider tourism economy by strengthening locally-owned restaurants that complement the country's major resorts.

"We have to look at it as more than just building up Atlantis or Baha Mar, because there are going to be guests who don't want to sit down at their restaurants, who want to come off the bridge or come down to a different restaurant," she added. "For me, it's almost creating an ecosystem of excellence."

Ms Small envisioned a system where internationally-recognised resorts could recommend Bahamian-owned establishments that have met industry training standards, enhancing the overall visitor experience while raising operating standards across the sector.

She added that experienced entrepreneurs also have a responsibility to mentor newcomers, helping them avoid costly mistakes made during their early years in business.

"When someone comes to me and says, 'Hey, I want to open a restaurant’, I'm trying my best to give them my POS insights. I'm trying to get them insight into my operational documents, because I want you to skip the five years we were failing or weren't making those decisions," Ms Small said.

"For me, more than ever, I really advocate for sustainability in how we train, resources, operational support, a lot of the things that take the business from being a start-up to being a business that could withstand and really maintain itself five plus years.”