Eating on the Run!!
By Joyette Mills-Ward
Business Reporter-SKNVibes.com
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts – WHEN you don’t have the time to sit and have a meal, ‘eating on the run’ is just what you may have to do. Whether eating on the run is something done by choice or something you have no control over, you sometimes just have to eat in a hurry!
It could be that you have a meeting to attend in 15 minutes and your previous meeting ran over into your normal lunchtime; or it could be that you live a long way from the city and have to struggle with shopping/hand bags, gym bags, laptop cases, or even children onto the bus, or even in your own car and just don’t want the hassle of ‘brown-bagging’ it, so you carry lunch-money.
There are a few things which factor into someone’s ability to eat on the run. They are:
1) Budget - the amount of money you have to spend;
2) Diet/Health - your physical or medical condition and any related dietary restrictions;
3) Workplace Location and Eatery/Restaurant Location;
4) Transportation - do you have your own vehicle?
5) Time/Duration - time of day when you normally take your lunch/amount of time you have;
6) Response Time/Speed of Service - how long do you have to wait to get what you’ve ordered? and
7) Delivery - can what you want be delivered?
Your budget, or the amount of money you have to spend, will greatly affect what you can eat and will limit you to what you can afford to eat. If you only have $10 you may be able to get a soft-drink/soda for $2.50 to $3.50 and perhaps some sort of pastry, or a hotdog. If you have $25 you should be able to get a full meal which has all food groups and a juice or a local drink.
~~Adz:Right~~ Some persons struggle with diabetes, high-blood pressure and many other physiological diseases not readily distinguishable to the eyes of the ordinary man or woman. Some people may be battling obesity, as a means of fighting heart-disease or weak leg-joints. Persons with these conditions should still pay attention to their prescribed menu, as healthy eating leads to healthy living. Some American franchises have gotten into the habit of posting the amount of fat in a particular menu -choice; some even count calories, or indicate somewhere on the menu which items are low-carb. The proliferation of Rastafarianism in the Caribbean has made its way into the eating habits of even non-dreadlocked residents or citizens locally. This is an additional option for persons needing to keep what they eat healthful. There are about three or four itinerant vegetarian food vendors, and one or two who have actual outlets on the outskirts of Basseterre heading west.
Your location, or the location of your workplace, further narrows the choices you have when eating on the run. Someone working in Sandy Point (for example at Harowe Servo) may not be able to eat at Domino’s, or KFC, because of the distance, and although both places offer delivery there are limits to how far out of town these companies offer this service. If you have your own vehicle, location of your workplace or the place from which you would like to buy your lunch is not so much a factor. However, sometimes even if what you want is just a 10 to15-minute drive round-trip, traffic can turn that drive into 20 to 30 minutes going and returning to the office, based on the time you take your lunch.
~~Adz:Right~~ Your lunch hour or the amount of time you have to actually get something to eat will sometimes dictate a need to eat on the run. The normal lunch hour is between 12 p.m. and 1 p.m., and because of this most places that serve lunch will have a good amount of school-children in their crowd of patrons during this period. Most business places now have staggered lunch hours to maximise coverage of important service areas (this enables persons to pay bills, or do other business during their lunch hour). So, in the business world, lunch can begin from as early as 11 a.m. or as late as 2 p.m. Most business places stipulate a one-hour duration for lunch to lower level staff, and this is normally sufficient unless you have to drive a long distance to get to where you want to buy your lunch.
The amount of time that you have to wait before you get your food can be impacted by the actual experience of the restaurants’ staff or the itinerant vendor; also the amount of persons you met waiting in queue before you got there. Service response time is very important if you have another meeting to get to from the customers perspective, even more important from the restaurants’/vendors’ perspective in trying to win a repeat customer.
You are luckier still if what you want to eat or are allowed medically to eat can be purchased from a franchise or local eatery that delivers. Further, a big-time player in the battle for your lunch-time dollars are the droves of independent and itinerant food vendors (You know – the persons you see making their daily hustle – selling anything from whole wheat johnny cakes to salt-fish balls, to muffins, to liver patties even, whom you can find going from one business place to another all around Basseterre. Some of them are even anchored/lodged at a specific location at a specific time on a specific day of the week!)
In a soon to be added area, you will be able to find places that you can “Eat on the Run” right here on SKNVibes.com!!
