Neville Spike, Business Writer

Lorna Golding, a businesswoman who has run the family-owned bakery Honey Crust for 25 years. - File

For 25 years, at 6:15 a.m. at the Golding's upper St Andrew home, while husband Bruce made last minute preparation for meetings at Belmont Road, Lorna was already out of the house and on her way to Old Harbour, St Catherine where the family-owned Honey Crust bakery is located.

It's a journey which should take 55 minutes to an hour, but Golding was usually in Old Harbour in 45 minutes.

"The police got to know me over the years," she says. "I got enough speeding tickets to prove it."

The daily journey from home in Kingston to Old Harbour was one Golding was to undertake for over a quarter century, while Bruce Golding, Jamaica's current Prime Minister, went about his job as a politician.

Sounding board

He was, however, also a sounding board for business ideas that Lorna wanted to try.

Over time, the one Honey Crust store in Old Harbour became five, with the addition of outlets in Linstead, Spanish Town, Papine and downtown Kingston.

Long before Paymaster's Audrey Marks, Manpower's Audrey Hinchcliffe and Island Grill's Thalia Lynn burst on to the business scene, Golding was pioneering fast foods such as callaloo loaf, cheese bread and chicken patties.

"I'm proud of our record of product introduction into the baking sector," says Golding, who was educated at Windsor High School, Kingston and New York School of Business, in the United States.

Honey Crust also offered options of a fish loaf, vegetable patties and cheese bread.

But it was its hot bread that would become the company's leading seller.

"Customers were fascinated, seeing the freshly baked bread coming directly from the oven, and it became our biggest seller," said Golding, who has given up running the business to concentrate on being a prime minister's wife.

Success, however, was to bring its share of problems for the business back then.

To piggy back on the scores of customers who flocked to Honey Crust day after day, fruit vendors would amass at the entrance to the store, selling bananas, oranges, sweet-sops, sour-sops and mangoes.

But ripe fruits attract flies and rodents, the last thing a bakery wants or needs.

That problem was eventually solved through dialogue.

Amicable understanding

"In the end, we reached an amicable understanding with the higglers," said Golding.

In the early stages of the business, the bakery was also dogged by unpredictable electricity supply.

Breaks in the public electricity supply in the middle of a baking session would result in under-baked bread, buns and bullas having to be scraped from baking pans and trays and dumped.

The answer was a standby generator.

From its inception, the business gave job preference to youngsters living in Old Harbour. But the concept of customer service was foreign to most of them.

Drawing on her experience as a teacher of business at Old Harbour Secondary, now Old Harbour High, youngsters were taught that even though customers may be their friends, family or neighbour, each person had to be treated with respect.

"We overcame that challenge successfully."

Discussion with husband Bruce about new products and ideas were also important. Bruce would be presented with the day's sales and his input sought.

"Bruce was very supportive," says Golding, the fifth of seven children born to Merita and James Charles in Lyme Tree, St Ann.

"It was Bruce who suggested that I go into the baking business".

Lorna, who is sister to Minister of Labour, Pearnel Charles, didn't need much persuasion. She grew up in a household where baking was a weekly routine.

It also didn't hurt that in her job as a business tutor at Old Harbour Secondary, with responsibility for securing short-term job placements for youngsters in the work experience programme, that she saw where she too could help if she had a business of her own.

While growing in Lyme Tree, St Ann, Lorna would help her mother bake wholesome tasting bread on Fridays for the family to eat on Saturday, the day the family attended church.

It was the same wholesome home style baking that she wanted her customers to have.

It was a hit.

The company's reputation grew, creating a throng of loyal customers among motorists passing through the town as well as folks from nearby communities who came into Old Harbour to shop.

"Honey Crust Bakery was the most popular bakery for miles around," says Milton Wade principal of the nearby Old Harbour Primary School.

"They did the best bread, bun and patties."

"Anytime you wanted a bread or a bun, Honey Crust was the only place you'd think of," recalls Tim Watt, long-time resident and proprietor of Quick Start Auto, Old Harbour.

"They made the best bread and bun. At Easter and other holidays, it was impossible to get inside the bakery, the way it used to be crowded."

But Honey Crust's success didn't side-track Golding from another preoccupation - the upbringing of her children, Sherene, Merita, and Steven.

Typical mom

At home, she was both a caregiver and disciplinarian - the typical mom.

"My mother was a strict disciplinarian. She was the kind of mother who came to school to meet your teachers and to see the kind of friends you were hanging around with," said Steven.

"She wasn't one of these modern moms who'd let you go where you want or do what you want. I used to give a lot of trouble - thief out of the yard and the like. She would talk, counsel and warn."

But when that failed, "she would ask daddy to talk to me," said Steven.

"He had only to give you one look and you know what that mean - cool yourself or else!"

Lorna's motherly instinct also flowed over into the business.

"Honey Crust was like one big family," says employee Dudley 'George' Bernal, who started at the company when it opened 25 years ago.

"If we had a problem 'Mamma G' would call everybody together and just like a mother she'd talk it out." The bakery was operated like one big family."

Twenty-five years on, the business has been scaled down.

Branches have been closed. The original Old Harbour location has been sold and the business passed on to the next generation of Goldings.

"I have retired from the business" says Golding whose focus now is on charitable works and other duties attendant on a prime minister's spouse.

Scaled down

The business has been scaled down and Steven is now in charge in Old Harbour.

"I enjoyed my time running the business, though there were challenging days sometimes. What gave me the greatest satisfaction though is that we were able to help the community by employing many people," said Golding.

"I also get a lot of satisfaction when people tell me how much they enjoyed our products. It made you feel that it was worthwhile."

neville.spike@gleanerjm.com