A generous Italian tourist became so impressed with popular fast-food joint, Sweet T’s, located Downtown Providenciales, that he provided an open cheque to owner Keith Higgs for a makeover of the establishment.
For the remodeling to take effect, Sweet’s was forced to close for almost two weeks, leaving customers concerned, with some wondering whether the affordable chicken-and-fries establishment was order closed by the Environmental Health Department.
And so, NewlineTCI went in search of Higgs, for him to give us the true picture.
According to Higgs, who at one point during our interview, could not hold back the tears, said the closure of the establishment was courtesy of the big-hearted gesture from the Italian tourist.
“A tourist from Italy told me that he and his kids were here for one week and they ate here twice a day…in the morning and in the afternoon,” Higgs explained, stating that the tourist told him that his children fell in love with the delectable chicken and crispy fries, which the establishment has been known for.
“…And he said, ‘man these kids really love Sweet T’s. And, so, he asked what he could do for me, and I said to him, ‘man, I am pretty good’. But he said, ‘we are going to do a little surprise for you’. He left me an open cheque at Kishco for me to purchase stuff for the place. He said what my kids experienced at Sweet T’s, no other place did it,” Higgs beamed.
Responding to NewslineTCI as to what the makeover would look like, Higgs said it included replacing all four deep fryers and paint job.
“I changed the four deep fryers…that’s what he told me to do. And he told me to do a complete paint job. He said ‘What I noticed is that you don’t have anything to pain because you have tiles right through on the inside and plate steels all over.
“He said, ‘Do me a favor, paint the top of the roof and paint the bannisters…that’s all I see you could paint’,” the Sweet T’s proprietor noted.
Higgs said the guest revealed to him that the main reason he wanted the roof to be painted was that when his children are flying over the island, they wanted to identify their favourite restaurant in the Turks and Caicos Islands.
Higgs said the gesture has given him a shot of inspiration to take Sweet T’s to higher heights.
“To be truthful, that (kind gesture) really motivates me…I was very motivated that a tourist would look back at a native and say, ‘I admire what you are doing…keep focusing on what you are doing’. What you are doing, you don’t know who is watching you…and he (tourist) was the one who was really having a watch at me,” Higgs continued.
The Sweet T’s owner said the dollar figure to the generosity shown by the tourist was in the region of about $9,000.
“I went the whole nine yards and just tear everything out to make it brand new and much cleaner. I did a real deep cleaning. For now, I will just have to do my normal Sunday servicing, because the stuff is brand new and we did some really deep cleaning while we were replacing some of the equipment,” Higgs said.