From Beauty to Bread – a response to COVID-19

What started off as a kind gesture during the Covid-19 pandemic, is slowly becoming a small business for a local woman.

Many know her as cosmetologist and former entertainer, Natalie Marshall-Joseph, but for now, she is into the business of bread-baking.

She told Dominica News Online (DNO) during an exclusive interview that the whole idea is to share her home with her customers.

 “The situation as it is, God has opened a way for me to bake bread and it is not about the commercial aspect of it; it’s about sharing my home with you because just how I would bake the bread for my family, that’s how I will bake it for the customer,” Marshall-Joseph stated. “Money comes out from it, but the whole idea is to share my home with you.”

Some people are already familiar with the business “Pass ‘N’ Pick Up Yuh Specialty Bread”, a different loaf bread every Friday costing only $20.

According to Joseph, who is also the owner of G-Suite Salon, formerly known as Genesis Unisex Salon located at Downing Gap, Goodwill, she was encouraged by her friends/customers to expand into bread baking.

She said that she was forced to close her hair salon due to the current Covid-19 pandemic and believes it was the right thing to do.

“I had an experience that really made me question how safe am I, how safe can I keep my family in this environment, because how do you know if somebody has it [Coronavirus], how do you know if someone who has it has not come in contact with one of my clients because of that one experience?” she asked.

She then decided to close her salon until further notice.

“I closed; I said I am not going to violate the law. I am a Christian; I am not going to go against the law,” Marshall-Joseph explained. “As much as I love my clients, I am not going to break the law…and I am going to trust God to open a door for me.”

She continued, “Again it’s trusting God. This thing is going on right now. I am not seeing the revenue that I would have seen before with the salon, I have to solely rely on this now because my husband had things stopped for him as well.”

 Marshall-Joseph added, “So far I am just going to bake bread and I am going to make sure that when the bread is baked I pay my tithe so that God will continue to bless me with it.”

She explained that every week she gets a fresh idea and the spirit gives her a new idea for a different kind of bread, “so every week the bread is different. I don’t make the same bread every week. This week is week 4.”

 Marshall-Joseph went on to say that currently, while many people are indoors, there is time to get a lot done.

 “There are so many things that we can do when we have the time, like when things weren’t as they are,” she stated. “We always complained that we were too busy; now, people have a lot of time.”

She added, “Time is precious you cannot afford to waste time.”

Marshall-Joseph, who is from the twin-island state of Trinidad & Tobago, gave credit to her mother who taught her that learning a skill is very important.

“We didn’t come from a wealthy background. I know what it is to not have; I know what it is to experience poverty but the good thing is that especially my mother, she conditioned us on how to rise above whatever,” she noted. “Another thing that she always encouraged us to do is to learn a skill…She taught us how to take whatever you have and make it into something more.”

Meantime, it seems that Natalie Marshall-Joseph’s Specialty Bread is going to survive the Covid-19 pandemic.

“I think I will continue baking after Covid-19,” she told DNO.

Customers can normally place their orders for the “Specialty Bread” on Thursday and pick up by 4 pm on Friday at Goodwill.

However, Marshall-Joseph informed us that a special whole wheat batch of Specialty Bread will be available on Thursday this week in addition to the regular batch on Friday.

She can be contacted at telephone numbers: 277-3535 or 6133005.