Sandeep Gupta opened TruFusion eatery at 542 Koomey Road in Brookshire Dec. 5 as one step in bringing three businesses to Brookshire. The first was the reopening of The Brooke Hotel in the same building as TruFusion, then TruFusion and finally a gym that includes a world class training center for badminton.
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Sandeep Gupta opened TruFusion eatery at 542 Koomey Road in Brookshire Dec. 5 as one step in bringing three businesses to Brookshire. The first was the reopening of The Brooke Hotel in the same building as TruFusion, then TruFusion and finally a gym that includes a world class training center for badminton.
“I bought (The Brooke Hotel) six years back as an investment property and then remodeled it for the rooms and everything. Now, Disha (Gupta, my daughter) is a badminton player. She’s an athlete and she’s training for the Olympics.”
Disha’s training has taken the family all over the world from Southeast Asia to a variety of locations to try to find a great place to train. Many of the facilities fell short of the family’s hopes, so Sandeep decided to take the land that the property is on and develop his own training facility. With that, he wanted a place for the worldwide trainees to stay in – The Brooke Hotel – and a place where those athletes would be able to find healthy food options – TruFusion.
“We wanted to get a place where we can have healthy food, at least just do buffet for the athletes and for the (local) people also. We’ll continue to figure out the menu as things progress,” Sandeep said.
Disha said she has trained in India, Denmark, Malaysia and many other locations, but nothing had the conveniences and environment necessary for Olympic-level training. The facility she trained at in Malaysia for example was often over 100 degrees with extraordinary levels of humidity which made it difficult to focus on improving technique.
Currently, TruFusion offers a variety of Eastern and Southeast Asian cuisine but also tosses in a few local favorites such as fried catfish to ensure there is variety, Sandeep said. He said he and his staff plan on working on the menu by trying different items regularly to allow locals to try different foods from around the world. One day might be a fish and vegetable medley and the following week a curry dish might be featured. The idea is to help develop a solid menu and keep diners from getting bored, he said.
Sandeep and Disha said they knew the hotel had a reputation for various issues and they’re working hard to keep it clean. They’ve reached out to the Brookshire Police Department to ensure that happens and to offer rooms for those who might be in need if the police are in need of assistance in finding shelter for someone. They also want to provide a clean and safe facility in general for visitors of all sorts and offer more dining options to locals as well as those passing through Brookshire.
“We wanted to just keep our hotel very clean,” Disha said. “We didn’t want any time of crime, any of the stuff that many times happens in hotels around here in small towns. So, I think we wanted to provide a safe place for people to work and just, you know, live a good life.”
That mindset is also going into the development of the yet-to-come gym and training facility, Sandeep said. He is working to design a facility that will provide dozens of jobs to residents near Brookshire and Pattison with a good wage and benefits. He even wants to hire local high school students to help them get started in their professions. If he can set up a community resource for the locals, he believes he can have solid foundation for setting up a resource for Olympic-level athletes that will travel to the facility, bringing money to the region.
“I want to provide something, you know, not just for the locals but also for the whole (Panamerican) region,” Sandeep said. “People coming from Mexico, from Argentina, from Peru to come here. From Cananada. They will have options to eat a new kind of food when they want to train.”