We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Cheryl Chin. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Cheryl below.

Alright, Cheryl thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to start by getting your thoughts on what you are seeing as some the biggest trends emerging in your industry

The constantly increasing popularity of ethnic foods.

For the past 8-10 years, I have seen our customer base expand greatly in terms of age, nationality and food tastes. People who in the past would never try unusual nor spicy foods are now loving them.

Cheryl, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

At my beloved Immaculate Conception Catholic High School in Jamaica, I didn’t enjoy our required Home Economics class which included sewing and cooking, so I opted out the next year and took Latin instead which I loved. So the irony of ending up cooking (in the early years) and running a restaurant is something most people don’t know about me. I am not fond of cooking. My Undergraduate and Graduate degrees from Florida International University are in Business Administration with majors in Insurance and Personnel Management. I was headed to the corporate world of Insurance but got married and joined my husband in the food business. I am proud of the longevity of Jamaica Kitchen. My husband’s family took over a pizza shop in 1976 and it slowly evolved to being completely Jamaican.
We are Jamaican Chinese so we also offer Chinese dishes on our menu that are not the traditional Chinese restaurant fare. We do offer some mainstream Chinese dishes for catering however. What makes us different is our menu variety. We get regular and unusual catering orders.
We try our best to fulfill them if possible.
We aim to make our customers feel welcome and at home. We have tried hard to keep our food consistently very good for years. We have a large age range of customers. Many have been coming for years, some from childhood and now as adults. We also get new customers daily. The many nationalities and backgrounds of our customers make the restaurant atmosphere very interesting indeed.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Several years ago my cashier (she has since passed 😭) was undergoing chemotherapy. I used to mainly serve meals. She would take orders and handle the register. I had another full time server who would leave at 4 pm for the day and a part time server who came at 6pm til closing. . However on Mondays after my cashier had her biweekly chemo treatments she would be nauseated and out sick for most of that week. She didn’t want to lose her job so asked me not to hire anyone else for the 6 weeks of treatment. So I would have to cash all day and serve as well between 4-6pm. That was so stressful and difficult. Once while rushing between the front and back I bumped my big toe and broke the nail. It was painful and bleeding but I only stopped for a minute to wrap it up and kept going. Tough times. I still miss her very much.

Can you open up about a time when you had a really close call with the business?

Covid was almost a death knell for us. We didn’t offer delivery at the time. Business dropped off badly. We are mainly takeout but many people stopped coming out. We quickly signed up with UberEats, Postmates, Doordash and Grubhub delivery services. They take a large chunk of our income as commission but were very necessary and now many people are used to the convenience. We also got a few nasty comments about “You” Chinese caused Covid. We survived however and are still here.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.JamaicaKitchen.com
• Instagram: @jamaicakitchen
• Facebook: Jamaica Kitchen
• Yelp: jamaica kitchen