Last week Tuesday night, "the shopkeepers' children" as Diana Cohen- Chan and Jane Chan laughingly called themselves, now owners and managers of the majestic Kapok Hotel and Restaurant in Cotton Hill, St Clair, and their mother Ena Chan, now retired but still a director, celebrated the Kapok's thirtieth anniversary at a gala reception where guests wore "elegantly oriental" fashion by request.
In 1964, Godfrey and Ena Chan operated a grocery in Guayaguayare. Their two children, Margarita (deceased) and Diana, lived in Woodford Street, Newtown, with their paternal grandmother during the school term, and then went to Guayaguayare for holidays. When the Hi Lo food chain went south, the Chans' naturally lost customers, also by this time the Chans had adopted Godfrey's three nephews when his brother passed away.
With great foresight, Ena decided "we have to make a living so I am thinking about other ways to do some business." And says Diana, now General Manager of the Kapok establishment, "my mother found the Cotton Hill site without my father's knowledge. She always wanted a family home, saw the property for sale, my father was in Guayaguayare working, she put down on the property at No 18 without him knowing."
Still speaking heavily accented English, Ena continued "I looked at it from every angle, it was near to the savannah, a very good location and safe with the police station right opposite, three buses were passing here. If that is for sale I must go to buy it. Not that we had the money. I had to fix this and that and my husband quarrelled with me so much."
The Chan family moved in and Diana remembers being told very clearly "downstairs would be the children's study to do our homework and so on. It never happened because it became the original Kapok Diner and Lounge."
Ena Chan decided to sell hot dogs and hamburgers, after all there were 200 readymade customers working in the Ministry of Agriculture. "I went to learn how to make hot dogs and hamburgers, and do you know the people came in used my napkins, bought one soft drink and brought their own food. After about two months I thought about opening a restaurant. It was very hard from the beginning."
In less than two years the restaurant opened with Ena in charge of the kitchen, Godfrey looking after the Chinese restaurant where mostly take away orders were served seven days a week. After school, Diana helped in the restaurant, mixing drinks and taking cash; and Margarita in the kitchen. Jane was a baby.
Then came a stint of managing Amoco House for the expats at Mayaro, servicing six to seven offshore rigs, and housekeeping and catering for the two Bristow Helicopter houses, in addition to the Kapok, which had been expanded along the way. "Godfrey really worked hard non-stop" says Ena, who had now purchased No 17 next door where Granny Chan and the adopted nephews lived, and finally No 16.
At about the same time that the Chans decided to build apartments, government offered tax incentives for ten years to those building hotels. "Not that we knew anything about hotels" says Ena "so we took a trip overseas and stayed in a hotel for the first time. I took notes on everything in Hong Kong where we stayed in all different hotels, and in Taiwan and Japan. We just observed and took up souvenirs."
The Chans returned and built a 35-room hotel, in 1970, the year of Black Power. "The hotel business was a very high risk in those days" says Diana "my parents had a track record of being good business people. Dad got to know the Managing Director of the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and got the loan because he passed by the restaurant and saw my father sweeping the front of the restaurant, asked who that man was, and said that is a hard working man so he must get the loan as which boss would sweep the front of his business."
Jane, who just happens to be married to a Chan and so has not changed her name, relates "the rooms were not full when the bank was coming to visit. There were only three guests in the hotel so Dad ran from room to room putting on lights in the entire hotel to give the impression that we were full. He acted as busboy, front office attendant, so much so that guests used to tip him when he carried their bags."
In 1972, the hotel expanded to 71 rooms, and stayed that way until 1997 when the two Chan women (their father had died in November 1994 and Margarita in March 1996) took up the challenge and expanded to 94 rooms completing in February 1998 for Carnival. In January 1999 the lobby, Tiki Village, and four Conference Rooms were redone; and the Bois Cano lounge, one new Conference Room and an entirely new kitchen were built. The arcade of shops was made more visible both from inside and outside of the hotel, and a little gym completed by the poolside. And finally the infrastructure of the new and old buildings were joined, and the Kapok was ready for the new millennium.
The two sisters who now completely manage the Kapok pay tribute to their mother "she always liked this part of the city. She was the first to start activity in Boissiere although her downtown peers told her 'you will never get business in that area and you cannot take away our business' which was never never Mom's intention."
"I told them I am just trying to make a living for my family and look today there is business all over the area" says Ena.
Although Margarita was the eldest, it was always Diana who was her father's right hand. "In Chinese families it just happens, you are involved as a given. And by personality Diana was just the one to succeed my father" says Jane with a shrug of her narrow 35 year old shoulders on which rests the position of second in command at the Kapok.
There was never any rivalry, says Ena, "Margarita was a more maternal person so she handled housekeeping and landscaping. Each of the girls has a strength and each one compliments the other."
And that is why expansion after Godfrey's death was never a problem as Diana explained "most people express disbelief that this business is being run by two women. During the construction they respected us because we were women, and then they discovered we were quite strongwilled, and also knew what we were talking about, as I had always been around in construction over the years with my father and mother. I like building seeing the fruition of the building, from start to finish. I believe, you like something you just do it with certain standards, no slapdash approach. Just doing it to the best. We (the three sisters) had three different talents that really worked well in the hotel."