Agostini Group is rebranding its Linda's locations into a modern 'Presto Fresh' concept, emphasizing local sourcing and convenience-driven food service across Trinidad.
Agos-ti-ni Group is bet-ting big on con-ve-nience re-tail, rolling out a re-vamped “Presto Fresh” con-cept that blends barista cof-fee, ready-made meals, and the fa-mil-iar Lin-da’s pas-tries cus-tomers al-ready know.. Di-rec-tor of New Busi-ness at Agos-ti-ni Lim-it-ed, Jean Luc Mout-tet, told Guardian Me-dia that the com-pa-ny is push-ing ahead with a ma-jor trans-for-ma-tion dri-ve across its store net-work, de-spite tighter eco-nom-ic con-di-tions.. Speak-ing at the launch of Presto Fresh O’Meara last Thurs-day, Mout-tet said the con-cept
was first in-tro-duced at the Aranguez lo-ca-tion and is de-signed to serve cus-tomers seek-ing fast, con-ve-nient meal op-tions.. “We’ve in-tro-duced fresh barista cof-fee, hot and cold.. We still have the same Lin-da’s pas-tries you know and love, which are ex-clu-sive-ly sold to us by Lin-da’s man-u-fac-tur-ing fa-cil-i-ty.. We’ve in-tro-duced the Presto meals that you would know from Su-per-Pharm, the sushi, the sand-wich-es, our wide range of desserts, our fruit cups,” Mout-tet said.. “We still have
the same fresh bread here from Lin-da’s, as well as ro-tis-serie chick-en.. So, it’s re-al-ly el-e-vat-ing that con-cept and tak-ing it to the next lev-el, mak-ing peo-ple’s lives more con-ve-nient but al-so bring-ing a fresh-ness to peo-ple’s lives that we be-lieve was need-ed in the coun-try.” The O’Meara out-let is the first ful-ly trans-formed lo-ca-tion un-der the com-pa-ny’s Im-age En-hance-ment Pro-gramme, which is con-vert-ing long-stand-ing Lin-da’s stores in-to the new-er PrestoFresh for-mat.. Mout-tet said the
shift is de-signed to mod-ernise the stores while keep-ing the prod-ucts cus-tomers have grown ac-cus-tomed to.. “When we first took over these stores two years ago, Lin-da’s con-cept was kind of out-dat-ed.. So, it need-ed to move to the next lev-el, and this was just our grad-ual step to that next lev-el of in-tro-duc-ing the barista cof-fee and the meals and hav-ing the same pas-tries but tak-ing it to the next lev-el of qual-i-ty.” The
re-vamped stores are built around what the com-pa-ny calls four pil-lars — “Fresh, Easy, Quick, Lo-cal.” Mout-tet said the busi-ness has de-lib-er-ate-ly fo-cused on sourc-ing lo-cal-ly as for-eign ex-change chal-lenges con-tin-ue to af-fect many com-pa-nies.. “If I’m be-ing hon-est with you, when it comes to for-eign ex-change, it isn’t re-al-ly a con-straint for us in-side this busi-ness.. As you can see from our slo-gan, we’re fresh, easy, quick, and lo-cal.. So, we try to sup-port
as many lo-cal ven-dors as we can.” “All of our pro-duce, our pas-tries, every-thing is pro-duced lo-cal-ly and bought in TT dol-lars.. Even with a lot of the out-fit-ting and fix-tures you see in-side the build-ing, we use a lot of lo-cal con-trac-tors and try to avoid bring-ing in any-thing as much as we can.” The com-pa-ny is al-so plan-ning fur-ther ex-pan-sion across Trinidad.. Mout-tet said all Lin-da’s lo-ca-tions are ex-pect-ed to be trans-formed in-to
the new for-mat by the end of 2026, while ad-di-tion-al con-cepts are al-so be-ing rolled out.. “We were at 16 stores.. We’re at 14 stores now, but we’ll be back up to 16 stores by the end of 2026 be-cause we have a few new mod-els, a few new con-cepts, and stores com-ing on-line.” “You’ll see us down in Diego Mar-tin with a Presto Mar-ket that will be com-ing on-line in mid-Ju-ly.” Mout-tet said the
wider Agos-ti-ni Group re-mains com-mit-ted to in-vest-ing in Trinidad and To-ba-go de-spite eco-nom-ic pres-sures.
Presto Fresh, Agostini Group, retail expansion, Linda's, Trinidad business, convenience retail