Drawing on her learning from the Explore Enterprise programme, Karona is now expanding her jerk seafood grill into a mobile restaurant.
After being evicted from her home in Jamaica, single parent Karona used all her savings to set up a street food stall to support herself and her daughter. Her jerk grill specialises in seafood – lobster, conch and fish, and she dives to source her own catch.
The Explore Enterprise programme supported Karona, 31, to develop the knowledge and confidence to officially register her business, build her brand, manage her finances and plan for growth. Today, Karona’s Jerk Seafood employs three regular staff, and brings in up to six workers for largescale events. In 2025, Karona bought a seafood truck with her earnings. She is now converting the van into a mobile restaurant.
‘The programme is amazing, any young person should try it,’ Karona says. ‘It will give you your tools to achieve your goal.’
Starting from scratch
Karona started off with very limited resources and no branding, relying on word-of-mouth marketing to attract customers. The Explore Enterprise programme, delivered through our partner Jamaica Youth Business Trust, helped her to adopt a CEO mindset.
Explore Enterprise aims to empower young entrepreneurs, whatever stage they are at, to build and grow their business. The programme introduced Karona to critical business concepts such as branding, budgeting, record-keeping and customer service, along with technical tools, such as invoicing apps, that helped her streamline her operations.
‘I learnt about branding, the backbone of the business and what tools you can use to implement to get your business kicked off,’ Karona recalls. ‘And it teach me about budgeting as well. It teach me how to do my books… Now I do my books and I pay taxes, and I do my own taxes now.’
The programme supported Karona to develop the knowledge and confidence to officially register her business, build her brand, manage her finances and plan for growth.
Becoming a boss
Karona’s business has gone from strength to strength. Starting out with monthly food events, Karona’s grill now serves around 300 customers from Thursday to Sunday every week, as well as providing catering for events.
Today, Karona is particularly proud to be providing jobs for others, and is happy to share the business insights she gained from the programme with her employees.
‘I’m not only doing this for myself, but to employ and help somebody else,’ Karona explains. ‘We have three staff at this moment working with us and they love us, they love what we do and we are family… I’m teaching my staff what I have learned, so they maybe can even branch off and start their business for their own self.’
Big ambitions
In 2025, Karona catered her largest event yet, providing food services at a concert by renowned reggae artist Buju Banton, with over 50,000 attendees. She used her profits from the event to buy a seafood truck, which she is now converting into her first mobile restaurant.
Confident, determined and disciplined, Karona has big ambitions. ‘I want to do bigger events,’ she explains. ‘In the future I would like to have many, many food trucks right across the world with my brand, my name and my personality with my food.’