Chicken & Tings adds another Kingston outlet, Portmore is next
Published:Sunday | October 8, 2023 | 12:08 AMKarena Bennett - Business Reporter
Grab-and-go restaurant chain Chicken & Tings is expanding.
The family-run business that started serving cooked meals to corporate workers, taxi operators, and vendors from a leased spot on the property of a service station in Half-Way-Tree, Kingston, 18-years ago, has now launched its fourth outlet at Shortwood Road in Kingston to broaden its coverage of the grab and go food market.
Chicken & Tings operates a chain of restaurants in Kingston at Cross Roads – its largest store, which combines warehouse space and a restaurant – Half Way Tree, Mannings Hill Road, and now Shortwood Road location, which was launched last week.
It’s next stop is Portmore, St Catherine.
“We are looking outside of Kingston for our next shop based on the feedback from our customers, and it’s highly likely that we will be heading to Portmore,” co-owner and CEO of Chicken & Tings, Emelio ‘Damian’ Madden, told the Financial Gleaner.
After working in a restaurant as a teenager, Madden realised that he had a passion for cooking. He and his brother, Larenzo Douse, later ventured into business and set up shop at a service station on Half-Way Tree Road.
That decision came with both success and failures, one of which included the challenge of holding down a suitable spot in the busy Half-Way Tree Square.
“We had to relocate to different spots in HWT, not because I wanted, but at the owner’s request. And so that was challenging, but we pushed through,” Madden said.
Chicken & Tings has grown to a workforce of 60 employees who work on two shifts from Monday to Saturday. Poultry meat is procured through Jamaica Broiler’s Group, but the brothers also provide steady business to their own family members through purchases of fruits and vegetables from the family farm operated by Madden’s father.
Chicken & Tings serves breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Its menu spans soups, porridge, chicken, pork, and oxtail meals that are priced between $600 and $1,600.
It has now added a new menu item at Shortwood Road to draw more customers to the store.
“We have a introduced a new item called stuffed dry dumpling or the ‘pocket rocket’. So it is, basically, fried dumpling with a meat kind in the middle, whether its ackee, callaloo or something of that nature,” he said. The dumplings are priced at $80 each.
Madden says he was sold on the new location based on its foot traffic and parking availability. Overall, he expects the new business place to grow revenue by 10 per cent.
He declined to comment on the cost of the new restaurant, which occupies about 400 square feet of leased space. The retrofitting of the space was ‘relatively easy’ and didn’t cost the company much, he said. The four restaurants have all been financed by cash, but Madden said he was now weighing external funding for the next growth project.