The Tribune

By YOURI KEMP

Tribune Business Reporter

ykemp@tribunemedia.net

A Bahamian-made ice cream producer is bouncing back after major COVID-19 related setbacks nearly saw the close of her business.

Melissa Darville, co-owner of Shiver, told Tribune Business that after the rough time she had with the Small Business Development Centre (SBDC) - where they sent her a demand letter at a time when the height of the COVID-19 pandemic had caused her company to temporarily halt production and was unable to make loan repayments - she is now “bouncing back” with some help and is looking forward to the New Year.

Ms Darville said: “I got a distributor and they are helping me order supplies like my cups and fruits and milk, so I was able to relaunch the ice cream line so that’s going well. My cups should be in by the end of January.”

With the ice cream relaunched and her cups about to be in stock, Shiver will be up and running to where it was prior to the pandemic where growth was strong.

“The cups are what everyone was waiting on. We were only using the half pints. We only realised we had the half pints left when we ran out of the individual serving cup, that was the key thing. Everyone was already attracted to the design of the other cups, so by January we should be good and back on our feet,” said Ms Darville.

Digging herself out of the hole and getting back on her feet has been no easy task and isn’t over yet. She still has an outstanding loan that she got through the SBDC from RBC for $100,000 out of a total of $161,000 in cash she received in 2019 prior to the pandemic. The balance of $51,000 was a $50,000 equity investment from the Bahamas Entrepreneurial Venture Fund and the remaining $11,600 was in grant funding from the government. However, her creditors have eased off of her slightly over the past year and are allowing her to rebuild from the COVID-19 economic collapse,

“I’m still not straight with RBC and all of them, but they stopped calling me. So, I told them I can pay the interest on the loan until we’re back in operation, because the payments were based on the hotel business and the school business and that still hasn’t started yet,” she said.

From what Ms Darville said RBC accepted the payment of the interest until the in-school sessions begin and the hotels are back on-line simultaneously, “I haven’t heard from RBC since the last time we spoke several months ago,” she added.

Ms Darville also said: “I realised I was never at fear of losing my business, I was in fear of losing my equipment. The business is about me and the recipe, the equipment can be replaced. But the recipe and the way Shiver is done is all me and I never was at risk of losing that I now see. It was not about the new equipment that made Shiver.

“That fear puts you under a lot of pressure and you can’t think, but when you remove yourself from that and focus on what made your initiative work in the first place you can go back to it and do it again.”

Ms Darville had to move back home with her mother and turn her home into an ice cream factory in order to cut costs in the meantime, something she said she should have done a while ago when the pandemic really began to bear down on her operations.

She said: “I just had to think my way through it and move my machines from that warehouse and get that sorted out, but I couldn’t remain frozen and thinking that it all was failing because one thing wasn’t working, I had to work with what I already had.”

Regarding her further dealings with the SBDC, Ms Darville said: “I haven’t been speaking with them at all. They sent me a demand letter for $5,000 and a collections agent came to me on behalf of RBC, but I told him I’m speaking RBC directly.”

Along with working with a distributor for Shiver, Ms Darville has also partnered with a catering company that use Shiver for their events, which has been “helpful.” “My other customers have been coming to me and asking me to do events, so that has been good. People are coming around to helping me.”

One of those people not helping Ms Darville and Shiver is her estranged business partner, who helped to leverage the loans through he SBDC and is a 50 percent partner in Shiver. “He has still not been helping and he still would not give up his shares in the business,” she said.