Dawn chips give Elijah Walters new start

When Hurricane Ivan devastated Grenada in 2004, it also dealt a death blow to Elijah Walters’ business.

At the time, Walters was a part-time trader of fresh produce – plantains, sweet potatoes and eddoes – to Grenada and a salesman for a wholesale firm.

However, as he recounted, the Lord inspired him to do chips and so began the production of Dawn plantain chips in April, 2005.

“I never had any experience doing chips,” Walters explained to SEARCHLIGHT from his production plant on the main highway at the Calder/Mt Pleasant junction. However, in obedience to the instruction, he purchased the required implements, cooking oil and a bunch of plantains and began his agro-processing business from the ground floor of his home.

The first bags were taken as free samples to the members of the Third Exodus Assembly, where Walters serves as a pastor. “… They [said] it taste real nice and they were very surprised how it came out.”

However, it took another “two to three years” of experimenting and research before Walters was fully satisfied with the standard achieved. Now, he confidently stands by the slogan “Now this is chips” that you will find on every bag produced.

The name ‘Dawn’ is reflective of the new start that Walters had to make and, coming as it did around the Easter season, saw this as the dawn of a new day.

“It was a low time in my life… there were brothers in the church (in Grenada) who needed assistance, so I had to resign. It was around Easter – the resurrection; after death it’s the resurrection; [so] this was a time of resurrection for me, a breaking of a new day.”

The product is available only on the local market, sold to wholesalers, supermarkets and other outlets, such as schools; and while the business is not really into retailing, “people come from their home and they buy for their children, because we try to make it a reasonable price,” Walters explained.

The product comes in standard sized bags, each weighing 1.5 ounces, which are packaged in larger consignments containing one dozen or two dozen bags. Walters sells a package containing a dozen chips at $13, while the package of 24 sells for $26.

The first stage of the process is the selection of the plantains; the bunch must be of a certain grade and without defect.

“It must be properly full, because if it is not properly full, it will come out white like banana [and] we don’t want our customers to think that it’s banana that we are producing, so it must be yellow,” Walters explained.

At the processing plant, the grains are peeled by hand, washed and then placed in large plastic buckets, before being taken to the frying station.

Slicing is done by hand at the frying station, and the sliced plantains then placed in deep fryers under high temperature, before taken out and placed on absorbent paper for about three minutes “to ensure [that] the oil is vaporized.”

From the drying area the chips are placed in large tubs, lightly salted “for taste”, packed and weighed before being sealed and made ready for distribution.

“Most people do it round, some do it long, so we just come in-between,” he said, regarding the shape of this product, which is also available as ripe chips and unsalted chips.

Walters and his team of four employees process between 400 and 1,000 pounds of plantains two to three days weekly, depending on supply. The remainder of the work week is taken up in the production of ‘Seven Peak’ coconut water.

Dawn chips was acclaimed by the public as the best plantain chips on the market in the 2017 Best of SVG Awards.

Walters has concluded it’s the Lord’s doing

“We try to do it the best way, and I believe it’s the Lord’s hand in it, and who the Lord bless no man can curse…”