Caribbean Swing

I have a dream and I am humbly asking you for 10 minutes of your time to hear about my dream. My name is Anthony Gibs and I was born and raised on the friendly island known as St. Maarten in the Caribbean. At the age of 17, I migrated to the Netherlands, where I followed a four-year program for my associate's degree in International restaurant and business management at the Mondriaan in Den Haag. I graduated with a degree in Hotel & Restaurant management. My professional career in hospitality began at Westin Dawn Beach Resort, Spa & Casino where I completed a year internship and was promoted to Banquet & In-Room dining supervisor. This position brought difficult challenges, where I worked under intense pressure with a limited but motivated and hard-working team, plus under four different managers within 6 months. After one year at this promising career position, I returned to the Netherlands to further my education. However, I took a little detour again for the love of the food & beverage industry and took a job offer at the newly established franchise known as Vapiano; where I was employed as Preparation Kitchen Team Leader, with the goal of becoming Kitchen manager at a new location in the near future. After two years at Vapiano, I began a four-year bachelor program in International Business Management at Rotterdam Business School. I gained professional experience in the business field after completing my internship in St. Maarten at St. Maarten Hospitality & Trade Association, where I worked with many professionals in the Hospitality & Trade industry and government officials. I was offered my job again at The Westin in the previous position, where I proved my dedication and passion for hospitality once again. During seventeen years of experience in Food & Beverage, my proudest event was to supervise service for the Majesty King & Queen of the Netherlands during their visit to the island of St. Maarten in 2013. I also was employed at Jamie’s Italian restaurant in the Netherlands as a team leader and line cook. At this moment, I share my passion for the industry employed at the Euromast. I am a determined, hard-working individual with great enthusiasm and is very optimistic. I am self-motivated and believe in success in everyone, therefore I will go out my way to help others and motivate them. My goals in life are to operate my own restaurant and develop into a franchise one day. In addition, I would like to be a respectable person and a legend in the community I reside in. I enjoy cooking tasty homemade meals for my family where my two sons come to the point that they would rather not go to a restaurant but prefer that I cook for them. My wife is a registered nurse that survived the Corona pandemic Corona free and believes in my dream. Throughout these last two summers, I have started working towards my dream by starting my own Facebook and Instagram page dedicated to showing my kitchen skills and meals I enjoy preparing. The Facebook and Instagram pages ( Caribbean Swing) has to turn into Caribbean Swing that has pop-up menus whenever it is possible for me with my busy work schedule. This has brought me to some success like catering for small events. Due to pandemic, my workplace was forced to close their doors, however, I was lucky to have a contract and not forced out of work but a percentage of my salary was deducted and was also forced to operate Caribbean Swing. These pop-up menus include home cook soul food of West Indian cuisine. Caribbean Swing has shown great potential and led me to produce 5 pop-up menus during the last two months of quarantine. Each menu has given demand of 20 to 30 orders per pop up menu. All these meals came out of my home kitchen with awesome reviews. On days of no pop-up menu, I still get several requests for food orders. As the demand for Caribbean food rises on Caribbean Swing even with a pandemic crisis at hand; I have been pushed to take this to another level and would like to make a legit small scale business with an operating kitchen. This way I can secure my already existing customers and reach more potential customers and avoid any legal issues because I am operating from my home kitchen. I have been granted the opportunity of starting a small kitchen, in a location close to home, even closer to my target customers who have been making food orders and continue building a potential feasible market via word of mouth and social media. I have accepted this opportunity as this is the best way for me to start small with as little risk as possible and for me to see how far and/or how fast this company can grow. However to make this dream a reality, I am humbly asking for a small donation ( a monetary gift) to my crowdfunding of any, help to assist me to reach this goal and assist me to get the necessary equipment. This helps the process start sooner and I will gladly return any investments that aren’t monetary gifts after profit is being made and stable.