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

Lai, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I have been cooking all of my life. My mother and grandparents started teaching me as early as 3 years old. My grandfather was a great cook, and we often cooked together as our bonding time. When I was about 8 years old I told my mother I wanted to own a restaurant, but unfortunately, my mother didn’t encourage that idea, instead, she told me how difficult it would be to be a business owner and the likeliness of success was slim, instead, she encouraged me to “get a good job”. I continued to cook as a hobby. When I moved into my first apartment I would often host events and parties and cater them, holidays at my house was also a staple for my friends and loved ones. As my craft grew I began to cater my friends events often as a gift to them for whatever they were celebrating. Quite often people would tell me I needed to open a restaurant and I’d brush the suggestion off. Circa 2005 while living in Florida, I came up with the idea of opening what I called a “Boutique Restaurant” I wanted to purchase a fixer-upper home in a dual zone area and flip it into a restaurant. But with very little funding, credit or support, I was unable to turn that dream into a reality and pretty much gave up on it. During the pandemic, I began to cook out of boredom, I came up with the idea of offering dinners to those on my social media as a way to engage with people safely. I offered what I named “pull-up service” where I would post the dinner of the day (typically Sundays) and people could pre-order a meal and when they arrived I would place their orders in their trunk and be able to engage in conversations from a 6ft distance. Before I knew it my customer base grew rapidly. I honestly never realized how much of a demand there was for the service I was offering. Before I knew it I was selling 40 dinners a day out of my one-bedroom apartment. Simultaneously, the company I worked for decided to do a pay cut as opposed to a layoff, and while speaking with a friend I made the comment that I was happy that I had started “hustling plates” so the pay cut didn’t affect me financially the way it would’ve had I not had another stream of income, and her reply “when are you going to start looking as it as a business and not a hustle”, that was the day South Island Kitchen was born. In addition to cooking, I have a “seasoning addiction” I loved to purchase different kinds of seasonings and mixing them together to create different flavors. As I began to further develop my cooking craft, I began educating myself on spices, from there I began buying herbs and dehydrating them myself, and creating my own blends. My collection grew to the point I had to purchase an additional storage cabinet just for my spice collection. When I mixed blends I liked I’d create samples and give them out to solicit feedback. From there I learned there were so many different wants and needs in the market, from those who want to limit their salt intake to those who don’t like any type of heat in their seasoning blends, different taste pallets, so forth, and so on. The more I learned the more recipes I would create. Then one day a friend came to my house and saw my collection of spices and said to me “you need to start selling this stuff” and that was the day South Island Spice was born.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

When I decided to embark on my business I wanted to offer products and menu options that I could identify with. Having grown up in a blended family of Geechee and Afro-Caribbean heritage I wanted to develop a brand that would represent my culture. On the catering end, my menu consists of a fusion of both cultures, and my seasonings are the perfect blends to create those masterpieces. Although I am a Chef, South Island Kitchen is a one-stop shop, my role doesn’t end in the kitchen, I am also skilled in event planning. I work with a multitude of service providers, when booking me I can provide full-service event execution. One of the things I am most proud of is having secured such a strong network of professionals in such a short time in this industry. I pride myself on providing quality work and successfully executing my customers’ vision.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

In 2021 I decided to embark on the food vendor industry. I registered for my first event and hired someone to complete the setup. Although the person came highly recommended, upon setting up he blew out my brand new generator. Without the generator, I was not able to sell anything, the whole setup was dependent on the use of the generator. Not only did I lose out on the $4k I invested in doing the event, but I also lost out on all potential profits and still had to pay the staff I hired to assist with the event. This occurred right after the business experienced a huge drop in sales due to the world opening back up after the quarantine. Not only did I have a meltdown, I thought it was the end of everything I had begun to build. I had to take a step back for a few months, but eventually, I gathered my bearing and began to plan how to get things back in order and continue to press through.

We’d really appreciate if you could talk to us about how you figured out the manufacturing process.

At the current moment, I still manufacture my Seasonings myself. I did the research and work to not only learn how to dehydrate and blend my own recipes, but I also learned how to package and price my product as well as label them according to FDA guidelines. While doing my research, I discovered a local spice manufacturing company in which I met to learn about the services they provide. Once my Seasoning business grows to support the need for their services, I do plan on contracting out the labor of manufacturing my goods.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.southislandspice.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/southislandkitchen
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/southislandkitchen
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/southislandkit1

Image Credits
Images courtesy of Brand New Consulting Group