theGrio Presents Black Made: Trinnette Morris, Founder/CEO/Chef of Trindy Gourmet
"If you have a unique gift of cooking, whether you learned it from your grandmother, your mother, your father, or you just were born with it," Morris says, "your path in this industry is bright."
Self-taught chef Trinnette Morris is the CEO/founder of Trindy Gourmet.
Although she started out as a teacher after she graduated college, connecting with people through cooking has always been at the forefront of her life.
“So, growing up, I saw a lot of large meals being prepared,” Morris tells theGrio. “My mom grew up on a 500-acre farm, so food has been a very instrumental part of my life. My dad’s a chef. But my cooking skills came from the maternal side of my family. My grandmother, again, who raised 16 kids, cooked breakfast, lunch and dinner.”
Morris, a proud graduate of Florida A&M University, spent years working in education. Then, on Jan. 4, 2010, she decided to merge her passions of teaching and cooking by launching Trindy Gourmet.
“We are caterers primarily, but we also do food production,” she said of her Florida-based enterprise. “We are also full time pool consultants for several businesses. We are mentors. We run concessions for accounting operations. So, literally anything, almost anything food-related.”
After more than a decade of making waves in the food and beverage industry, the West Palm Beach native landed a one-of-a-kind opportunity. In the summer of 2022, Trindy Gourmet was hired to work with South Florida luxury train service, Brightline. Morris calls it “an amazing partnership.”
“We are celebrating our year anniversary with them,” she notes. “It really is just Trindy Gourmet, a female Black-owned business, providing a Brightline with their AM and PM bento box offerings for their premium passengers.”
Although she’s built a number of successful businesses, Morris says she’s not the only skilled chef in the area — which is why she’s making it a goal to nurture underrepresented African-Americans in the field: To show them there’s more than one way to make money in the food and beverage industry.
“You can go right into having a food truck if you want it,” she maintains. “You can go right into having your trap kitchen and selling plates from your house. That traditional route that people have us to believe is necessary is so unnecessary.”
Check out the full video above to learn more about Trindy Gourmet.
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