Why I Still Buy Exeter
I don’t buy corned beef often – but every once in a while I have a craving for corned beef cakes OR my son and his friends have set up camp at my house and I have to bring out the old recipes to keep everyone full. When I do buy it - I buy Exeter.
And if there is a choice between an unfamiliar supermarket brand and a Waitrose product, I will probably reach for the Waitrose version without giving it much thought.That confess may seem bizarre coming from someone who spends a great deal of time thinking about local food, food sovereignty, agriculture, and the future of Barbadian food production. But perhaps that is precisely why it is worth acknowledging.
Because if we are going to have an honest conversation about food in Barbados, we have to begin with the understanding that none of us is entirely immune to the stories, norms and habits we have inherited.
Many years ago, I had the opportunity to meet Douglas Orane, then the head of GraceKennedy – a truly visionary and accessible leader, who listened and learned.
At some point during our conversation, the discussion turned to Grace Corned Beef, which had recently entered the Barbadian market. Given Barbados' long-standing affection for corned beef in all its forms, he was curious about why the product had not gained the traction as quickly as expected.
My answer surprised him.
I told him I did not think the problem was the product.
I thought the problem was the advertisement.
The commercial featured a smiling mother, dressed in a spotless white apron, lovingly serving a breakfast of corned beef and cabbage to her son before sending him off to start his day.
Now in my head I thought: “which Bajan woman is standing in a kitchen wearing a pristine white unscathed apron?”
The Barbadian uniform of choice has traditionally been the house frock, the house dress, the duster. And if it is a well-loved iteration, it often serves as a living archive of recent culinary history. A little gravy from Wednesday. A splash of curry from Friday. Perhaps an unidentified stain that has survived multiple wash cycles and is now part of the fabric’s character.
The advertisement was presenting a version of Bajan domestic life that felt imported rather than observed.
But the bigger issue was the breakfast itself.
Corned beef and cabbage.
For breakfast. The moment I saw it, I am sorry nutrition didn’t come to mind but flatulence sure did.
We Bajans have a fascinating relationship with flatulence. We fear it. We deny it. We blame it on somebody else. We discuss it with the seriousness normally reserved for national emergencies.
And when I saw corned beef and cabbage sharing the same plate before sunrise, my first thought was “school gine be tuff for dis chap (and his friends) today”.
Humour aside, the advertisement revealed something important.
Whoever created it did not really understand the place corned beef occupies in the Barbadian psyche.
Corned beef is hurricane food – it literally is the first thing we buy when there is even the hint of excess rainfall far less high winds etc. It is the meal that appears when money is tight and creativity is required. Nothing pulls louder than a corned beef gravy with nuff onions and friendly white rice.
It is a rum shop staple. Corned Beef, Pepper sauce and Eclipse Biscuits (in that precise order) all combined to enhance one’s absorptive capacity for ESA Fields, Alleyne Arthur, etc etc.
It is practical, familiar, dependable and deeply woven into everyday life – even as many of us wouldn’t readily admit it.
The advertisement was not selling corned beef to Barbadians. It was selling an idea of Barbadians.
And therein lay the problem.
Yet over the years I have come to realize that the more interesting question was not why Grace struggled. It was why I still buy Exeter.
After all, Exeter is not Barbadian.
Nor is Hereford, another fixture on the corned beef shelf in the supermarket.
Both names come from England.
The irony, of course, is that the product itself is manufactured in Brazil.
Think about that for a moment: The consumer is Barbadian. The meat is South American. The brand identity is British.
And somehow that combination feels entirely normal. Totally in sync with everything else on our supermarket shelves.
Meanwhile, a Caribbean company introducing a Caribbean brand finds itself struggling to establish credibility in a Caribbean market.
That contradiction has fascinated and indeed plagued me ever since.
Because it reveals something deeper than a marketing challenge.
It reveals one of the enduring tensions at the heart of Barbadian food culture.
For generations, we have consumed local realities through imported stories.
We often speak about food sovereignty as though it is simply a matter of producing more food. But Food sovereignty exists at the intersection of food security and food choice.
For decades now, policy discussions have focused on increasing domestic production, reducing imports and strengthening agricultural value chains. These are important goals. But production alone cannot deliver food sovereignty. If food security is about ensuring food is available, then food sovereignty is about whether we choose our own food when alternatives are available.
So it’s also about confidence. It is about whose stories we trust. Whose brands we admire.
Whose standards we assume are superior and whose names we associate with quality.
The reality is that many of us - including me - have inherited certain assumptions.
I can tell you all the reasons why local production matters – I am after all a producer.
I can explain the economic value of shortening supply chains.
I can speak passionately about supporting farmers, processors, and local entrepreneurs.
And yet I still find myself reaching for Exeter.
I still trust Waitrose.
Not because I have conducted a detailed comparative analysis every time I shop, but because somewhere along the way those brands became embedded in my understanding of quality, reliability and reassurance.
That realization is extremely uncomfortable - but it is also illuminating and cathartic. Because the challenge facing local food production is not simply one of volume, efficiency, or price. It is psychological. We are still navigating the colonial and culturally corrosive legacy of centuries in which foreign products, foreign standards, and foreign approval were presented as inherently superior.
Even today, many businesses believe that success requires sounding foreign, looking foreign, or marketing themselves through someone else’s lens.
Sadly, our hospitality sector reinforces this instinct. We are told that visitors want certain things. Imported products are perceived as safer choices. International brands are assumed to carry prestige. Local food is frequently expected to justify itself in ways imported food never has to.
Over time, those assumptions become habits. And habits become culture. And the result is a peculiar contradiction.
We celebrate Barbadian identity in speeches, Barbadian resilience in moments of crisis, and Barbadian creativity whenever one of us succeeds abroad. Yet we often remain hesitant to trust Barbadian stories when they appear on our supermarket shelves.
Perhaps that is why the conversation with Douglas Orane has stayed with me for so many years. And it is what has motivated the creation of Cane and Kitchen.
What seemed at the time to be a humorous conversation about corned beef was actually a conversation about identity, memory, aspiration, colonial scars and about the stories we continue to tell ourselves every time we walk down a supermarket aisle.
The question is not whether imported food has a place in Barbados. It does.
The question is why a British name on a Brazilian product can feel more authentic than a Caribbean brand speaking directly to Caribbean consumers.
Food is never just food. It is memory. It is status. It is history. It is belonging.
And sometimes, hidden inside something as ordinary as a tin of corned beef, is an entire story about who we are.
Perhaps the future of Barbadian food is not simply about producing more.
Perhaps it is about learning to trust our own stories enough to build brands around them. I am not entirely sure I have solved that contradiction for myself. After all, the next time I crave corned beef cakes, there is a very good chance I will still reach for Exeter.