Yogurt may not yet have secured a market share similar to fried chicken or hamburgers, but Gail Russell is determined to stake her claim, driven by the knowledge that she is in the business of selling a valuable commodity: healthy eating.
Russell believes her most recent business pursuit, Yog Yog’s Frozen Yogurt, is highly marketable given global and more recently local concerns about healthy eating and the risks associated with obesity.
She is prepared to take the time to “grow” the local market. She points out that a deliberate decision was
taken not to install television or Wi Fi on the premises, since she wants visitors to Yog Yog’s to enjoy only the ambience and the product.
Since last Saturday when the establishment opened its doors for business, the flow of customers has been “steady and encouraging”, she says. Russell is all too aware, however, that novelty is insufficient to create reliable momentum and her plans include a marketing and advertising regime that will focus on the health benefits of what the entity has to offer.
Russell lays claim to being a member of the family that helped pioneer the commercial drinking water sector. For the past 14 years the family has owned and operated Nimbus Water from premises situated at the corner of Laluni and Albert streets. It is, she says, a choice of business that is consistent with her own commitment to healthy living.
The prior existence of business premises meant that the size of the investment was considerably less than it would otherwise have been. Russell estimates the recent investment at around US$250,000, a relatively modest amount from which she believes Guyana can secure invaluable returns.
The novelty of the enterprise has not been without its challenges. Russell is sometimes at pains to explain to customers that yogurt and ice cream are two fundamentally different products and that the price differential is accounted for by the difference in quality. Sometimes, she says, they are miffed though she concedes that this is one of the challenges associated with “creating demand”.
Apart from the imported flavours of yogurt that include chocolate, strawberry and caramel the parlour also offers soursop and pineapple. Mango will go on trial as an option once the fruit is in season.
Like so many other energy-dependent industries in Guyana, Russell says high electricity costs are a challenge. Frozen yogurt is exactly what it says it is. An unreliable electricity supply is not an option, hence her investment in a generator.
Two attendants serve the parlour. Customers serve themselves and that method demands different skills and sensitivities of the attendants. Ongoing training is underway.
Down the road, Russell is contemplating the creation of other branches locally and perhaps even venturing out into parts of the region. She is aware, however, that business decisions of that nature cannot be taken lightly and that the newness of the product and what can sometimes be the fickleness of taste requires her to make careful decisions.
Ten years ago Russell migrated to Canada where she underwent other transformations that helped her arrive at the place of her current pursuits. She became a fitness trainer, a job imbued with the disciplines of rising early, eating healthy and embracing workout routines. Her day starts at 6 am with her own one-hour fitness routine. After breakfast she heads for the gymnasium where she spends the rest of the day.
Russell is a passionate believer in good health as an extension of a good life. As a businesswoman herself, she advocates exercising and healthy eating as part of the routine of busy entrepreneurs. She believes that staying in shape physically and mentally are assets that can be invaluable in coping with the multi-faceted demands of managing a business.
Accordingly, she says, she is pleased to see that health consciousness associated with fitness and exercise has become a thriving industry in Guyana. She believes that apart from being good for business it’s also good for the well-being of the nation.
Russell, who resides in Canada with her husband, Trevor Taylor, returns to Guyana regularly to stay connected to her two children and her 88-year-old father, George Ovid Russell, a former managing director of Guyana Stores and the Guyana National Industrial Corporation. It was during one of those visits, she says, that she discovered that there was nothing with which to beat the heat except ice cream. Her health-conscious nature caused her to find the idea unappealing.
The idea of starting her now up-and-running enterprise was born when she walked into a frozen yogurt parlour in Canada and discovered that there were healthier, no less tasty options to ice cream for coping with the heat.
It took six months to put the plan together and Russell says the fact that Nimbus was already a thriving enterprise helped.
Russell’s is not the first business enterprise in recent years to embrace a food product manufactured outside Guyana. To sustain the service, she and her husband import the ingredients from Canada, a task that takes them into the realms of import and health and safety regulations. It is the same with the several fast food franchises that have emerged in Guyana in recent years.
Now a wife, mother, grandmother, fitness trainer and businesswoman, Russell has realised an impressive range of accomplishments in a life that has been lived for just 50 years. During the 1970s and 1980s she was participating in beauty and bodybuilding competitions and serving as a model. Some of the accomplishments she recalls are the Ms Phagwah and Ms Diwali titles. During those years she also won a Ms Physique competition and was the runner-up in a Ms Best Legs competition.
The journey began with an interest in modelling as a student at Richard Ishmael Secondary School. Her earliest support came from her father and a teacher. Afterwards Russell used her own experience to immerse herself in training other young women for beauty pageants and fashion shows.
Thought those pursuits are now firmly in Russell’s past, her physical appearance still reflects what has been a near lifelong commitment to health and wellness.
Russell says that as far back as she can remember she was a health conscious person and once you become engrossed in conversation with her you realize that she finds it hard to separate her preoccupation with being healthy from the line of business that she has chosen.
