Business View Caribbean | Jan 2019

55 company sees a fair amount of tourist trade, but mostly for the purchase of alcohol, especially local rums, that are available in the supermarket. “The bread has been a huge draw over the years,” Bousquet boasts, with good reason. “The bakery is the soul of the business.When it started off in the early 1980s, the bread and the cakes were being baked by Mrs. Veronica Glace at her own home. To this day, we have the distinction of baking preservative-free bread. I believe we are one of the few, if not the only one, on the island who follows that philosophy. Our ingredient base is also better, from the perspective that we use better quality, more expensive ingredients.We’ve focused over the years on our bakery being able to produce exclusive preservative-free bread, which is widely regarded as the best on St. Lucia. And it smells absolutely wonderful when you walk into the store.” In 2014, Glace Supermarket – the bakery division–had gone into partnership with a regional company, and the bread was being marketed under the Wonder Bakery logo in St. Lucia. But last year, Glace reacquired the bakery, rehired their previous bakers, and restarted that portion of the business. Bousquet reports, “We’re keeping the original ingredients, the original methodology, and the original recipes, and it’s going great. The feedback has been tremendous. The grocery division certainly brings in more revenue, but the bakery would be, by far, the most profitable part of our business, right now.” The hardware, auto accessories, and gas station are all located on the same site as the supermarket and bakery but are separate divisions of the company.What’s interesting, according to Bousquet, is that when Glace first tied the supermarket to the fuel station, even Glace Bakery Staff