One cold February day, Angela Lawrence, the owner of Montego Island Cuisine in Brooklyn, turned to TikTok to make a desperate plea.
“Brooklyn, I need your help,” she began her message, asking viewers to support her struggling business.
“I opened up a small Jamaican restaurant and today is one of the days I need your help with online orders,” Lawrence continued in the minute-long video. “Please, if you can go on DoorDash and Grubhub and place an order, it doesn’t matter how small it is, it would truly mean a lot to me, it helps keep my doors open.”
Then came the stream of supporters: to date, the video has more than 10,000 likes, 1,000 comments and 2,600 shares on TikTok. Some users gave her tips on expanding her reach, such as flyering around the neighborhood, especially near Kings County Hospital. But for Lawrence, social media is the best avenue for reaching customers.
“Social media is where you get the word out – sometimes you may sit down and you’re watching something and you say, ‘Oh I want to go there, I want to do that,’” Lawrence told Documented, adding that several customers discovered the restaurant on TikTok.
The impact has been powerful – customers have traveled from different boroughs after watching her TikTok videos, and they even attracted influencers such as One Kevin, a Jamaican TikToker, and community activist Sander Cameau, who visited the store during Documented’s interview with Lawrence.
But while Lawrence said she’s seen a swell in customers over the last month, her business is still struggling.
“A lot of people don’t understand running a business, if you have good capital, then you can hire the right staff. That way you know things are going smoothly and you’re working on your business and not in your business,” said Lawrence, who is involved in everyday aspects of her business, from financial management to cooking and opening the doors. She also has a chef and one cashier.
Lawrence’s experience speaks to the difficulties faced by other restaurant owners starting businesses amid a challenging economic time in New York City. About 8,400 restaurants shuttered in the second quarter of 2025, according to one report.
Lawrence moved to the United States from Jamaica at 15 and spent several years in Virginia, working first in the home health care industry before food service.
Last year, she arrived in New York to finally pursue her professional dream. “I always wanted to open a restaurant, but at the time, my kids were very young,” Lawrence said.
While bright-eyed and eager to join a strong Caribbean community, Lawrence said she faced the hard truths of doing business in Brooklyn. This was her first winter in New York, dealing with harsh temperatures and fewer people braving them to patronize her restaurant.
Additionally, Lawrence acknowledged that she didn’t have much financial backing from the start and while she looked into business loans, she worried whether her daily earnings would be enough to pay back the loans.Compounding the struggle, Lawrence said, is the location of her business. While it’s in the predominantly Caribbean neighborhood of East Flatbush, her TikTok supporters noted she’s in an area that sees little foot traffic.
Additionally, the restaurant is part of a corner property on Clarkson and Albany Avenue, which also houses a pharmacy facing Clarkson Avenue. When users search for Montego Island Cuisine on Google Maps, a photo of the pharmacy comes up.
Despite her own struggles, Lawrence knows she’s not the only one hurting. With Americans generally spending less in 2026, Lawrence said she wants to be more than just a business owner generating income from sales but instead truly a part of the community.
“I don’t want to just be here to just make money and go home, I want to do something in the community to make a difference because you have to try to make a difference on this earth here,” said Lawrence, who offers free deliveries to hospital workers at nearby Kings County Hospital.
In the future, Lawrence hopes to expand her community reach. While she eventually wants to open another location, she’s also thinking more modestly about events on the restaurant’s outdoor patio, such as bingo nights, fish fries, jerk days, and gatherings for single mothers and victims of domestic violence.
“I want, when people think about eating and having a good time, for them to think about this place,” Lawrence said. “They can always count on knowing that they’re going to get a good meal.”
