Golden Krust
{{Short description|American fast food chain and manufacturer of Caribbean cuisine}}
{{Infobox company
| logo = Golden-Krust-Logo.png
| logo_caption =
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| type = Private
| area_served = United States
| foundation = {{start date and age|1989}}
The Bronx, New York City, United States
| founders = Lowell Hawthorne and family
| location = 3958 Park Avenue, Bronx NY 10457
| locations = 120+{{cite web|url=https://www.goldenkrust.com/our-story/ |title=Overview |author= |publisher=Golden Krust Caribbean Restaurant |date= |accessdate=2019-07-31}}
| key_people = Jacqueline Hawthorne (CEO){{cite web|url=https://www.goldenkrust.com/executive-team/ |title=Executive Team |author= |publisher=Golden Krust Caribbean Restaurant |date= |accessdate=2019-01-04}}
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| industry = Restaurant
| products = Jamaican food, Jamaican patty, Caribbean cuisine, Baked goods, Jerk chicken, Oxtail
| parent =
| homepage = {{url|goldenkrust.com}}
}}
File:Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery & Grill.jpg
File:Golden-krust-sheridan-mall-exterior.jpg
Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery, Inc. is a Caribbean fast casual restaurant operator and manufacturer of Caribbean cuisine including Jamaican food, Jamaican patty, and other baked goods.
The parent company is owned by the Hawthorne family, and the stores are franchised. There are over 100 Golden Krust restaurants operating in nine U.S. states: New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Georgia, Florida, Maryland, North Carolina, Massachusetts, and Texas. The majority of the restaurants are situated in New York.{{cite web|url=https://www.goldenkrust.com/location |title=Store Search |author= |work=Golden Krust |publisher=Golden Krust Caribbean Restaurant |date= |accessdate=2016-07-10}} It is New York City's largest locally-owned restaurant chain.
The company also distributes food products to retailers, schools and prisons, is considered the foremost Jamaican business in the U.S.{{cite news |date=August 30, 2006 |title=Shirley commends Golden Krust |url=http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20060830/news/news8.html |url-status=dead |work=Jamaica Gleaner |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071008202821/http://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20060830/news/news8.html |archive-date=2007-10-08}} and was featured on the CBS reality television show Undercover Boss in 2016.
History
Golden Krust's origins trace back to a 50-year-old bakery owned by Ephraim Hawthorne in Saint Andrew, Jamaica, that served family recipes.{{cite web | url=http://www.boj.com/articles/franchise/jamaican.htm | title=Jamaican fast food: The next big thing? - Franchise Article }} Ephraim's son Lowell Hawthorne, Golden Krust's former President and CEO, opened the first U.S. restaurant in 1989 on Gun Hill Road in the Bronx. To open its first restaurant, the Hawthorne family, according to Business Opportunities Journal pooled $107,000, "using the Jamaican concept of susu, whereby everyone pitched in $100 a week to raise start-up money after banks refused them a loan."{{cite news |last=Aikman |first=Becky |title=Jamaican fast food: The next big thing? |url=http://www.boj.com/articles/franchise/jamaican.htm |url-status=dead |work=Business Opportunities Journal |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090602220458/http://www.boj.com/articles/franchise/jamaican.htm |archive-date=2009-06-02}}
Jamaica's ambassador to the United States was present for the opening of the chain's fifth store in Atlanta, Georgia in 2009.[http://www.jis.gov.jm/foreign_affairs/html/20090721T170000-0500_20487_JIS_GOLDEN_KRUST_OPENS_FIFTH_RESTAURANT_IN_ATLANTA.asp Golden Krust Opens Fifth Restaurant in Atlanta] Tuesday, July 21, 2009 Jamaica Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Foreign Trade
The parent company later became involved in the financial services industry{{how|date=March 2023}}.[http://www.jnbs.com/dynaweb.dti?dynasection=news&dynapage=news_media&id=188&PHPSESSID=fe21e59671d7fe5074ab92f27a2819e9 Jamaica National Overseas And Golden Krust (New York)] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110713111546/http://www.jnbs.com/dynaweb.dti?dynasection=news&dynapage=news_media&id=188&PHPSESSID=fe21e59671d7fe5074ab92f27a2819e9 |date=2011-07-13 }} February 18, 2005 Jamaica National Building Society 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. As of 2005, nine brothers and sisters are involved in the family business.{{cite news |last=Garcia |first=Michelle |date=February 14, 2005 |title=For N.Y. Caribbean Beef Patty Co., Business Is Cooking |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2005/02/14/for-ny-caribbean-beef-patty-co-business-is-cooking/1809c201-2549-42dd-95ab-9252b3697891/ |newspaper=The Washington Post |page=A03}}
Lowell Hawthorne was found dead of suicide on December 2, 2017, aged 57, inside a Golden Krust factory in the Bronx.{{Cite news|last1=Schrader|first1=Adam|last2=Parascandola|first2=Rocco|last3=Keith|first3=Ross|last4=Schapiro|first4=Rich|date=December 2, 2017|url=http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/bronx/golden-krust-founder-commits-suicide-bronx-factory-article-1.3673215|title=Golden Krust founder commits suicide in Bronx factory|work=Daily News|location=New York|access-date=2017-12-03|language=en}} He was in debt, faced tax liens in excess of $150,000, and a class-action lawsuit.{{cite news|url=https://www.lohud.com/story/news/local/2017/12/08/golden-krust-ceo-lowell-hawthorne-sued/934372001/|title=Golden Krust CEO Lowell Hawthorne sued by employees, less than one week after being found dead|work=Lohud|date=8 December 2017|last=Fitz-Gibbon|first=Jorge}} Still, his death was mourned by many including former employees, colleagues and Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness.{{cite tweet|number=937126930142261248|user=AndrewHolnessJM|title=My condolences to the friends, family and employees of Jamaica-born Lowell Hawthorne, CEO of Golden Krust Caribbean Bakery & Grill. He headed the largest Caribbean franchise chain in the US, with more than 120 stores.|author-link=Andrew Holness|date=December 2, 2017|last=Holness|first=Andrew}} Hawthorne was previously featured on the CBS reality television show Undercover Boss in 2016.{{cite web|url=http://www.blackenterprise.com/be-100s-ceo-of-golden-krust-bakery-grill-to-appear-on-cbs-hit-series-undercover-boss/|title=CEO of Golden Krust Bakery & Grill to Appear on CBS Hit Series 'UNDERCOVER BOSS'|last1=Brown|first1=Carolyn M.|date=May 20, 2016|website=Black Enterprise|accessdate=April 12, 2018}}
Menu
Their restaurants serve mildly spicy, and hot, Jamaican patties, jerk chicken and fish, dumplings, steamed yams, and curried meat dishes.AJP page M3 May 8, 2009 India Abroad{{full citation needed|date=July 2018}} Items served include callaloo (Caribbean greens) and ackee.{{cite web | last=Denitto | first=Emily | title=FOOD FINDS; The Revels You Know, The Revels You Don't | website=The New York Times | date=2005-05-01 | url=https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/01/nyregion/food-finds-the-revels-you-know-the-revels-you-dont.html | access-date=2018-07-18}}
In 1998 the company produced 25 million flaky burnt-orange patties on assembly lines at its main facility.{{cite web | last=Waldman | first=Amy | title=NEW YORKERS & CO.; From a Flaky Foundation, a Food Empire | website=The New York Times | date=1998-04-26 | url=https://www.nytimes.com/1998/04/26/nyregion/new-yorkers-co-from-a-flaky-foundation-a-food-empire.html | access-date=2018-07-18}} 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 are a draw to the West Indian community. Many of its original franchises were opened by nurses, and many are opened near hospitals where many workers are West Indian with Caribbean heritage.{{cite web | last=Kramer | first=Louise | title=HOME FRONT; For Ex-Nurses, Real Money's in Takeout | website=The New York Times | date=2004-04-04 | url=https://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/04/jobs/home-front-for-ex-nurses-real-money-s-in-takeout.html | access-date=2018-07-18}} Core customers come from Jamaica, Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Haiti, The Bahamas, St. Lucia, and Grenada.
The chain started out serving Caribbean immigrants, but customers now includes Americans and immigrants of all national ancestries. The type of food served is "becoming more and more familiar to all Americans thanks to holidays taken in Aruba, Jamaica, or Trinidad and Tobago, or through meeting at work people from these islands and others." By 2009, there were plans to open an additional 250 stores over the next five years in the U.S., Europe, Canada, and the Caribbean.
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.{{cite web|last=Kramer|first=Peter D.|date=August 12, 2016|url=http://www.lohud.com/story/news/2016/08/12/golden-krust-plans-relocate-rockland/88580920/|title=Golden Krust plans to relocate to Rockland|work=lohud.com}}
The Hawthornes 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.
In popular culture
The chain was featured on the U.S. version of Undercover Boss in episode 12 of season 7 in 2016.
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- {{Official website|http://www.goldenkrust.com/}}
- [https://www.flickr.com/photos/steventom/103707151/ Image of a Golden Krust meal]
- The free company report: http://new-york.intercreditreport.com/company/golden-krust-caribbean-bakery-grill-inc-4320848
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Golden Krust Caribbean Restaurant}}
Category:Caribbean-American culture in New York (state)
Category:Restaurants established in 1989
Category:Caribbean-American history
Category:Fast-food chains of the United States
Category:Jamaican-American history
Category:Restaurants in New York City
Category:1989 establishments in New York City