After graduating from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette in 2011, I was unable to find a job with my degree. I started selling my textbooks on eBay to earn money. While selling on eBay, I discovered some cool products and decided to sell them online and at the jockey lot on weekends. I enjoyed what I was doing, even though it was short-lived. After nearly a year, I had enough savings to start a new restaurant venture with three other partners. One of my partners was someone whom I met at a local restaurant while working there. He was a waiter, and I was just a hostess. He left his home country Indonesia at the age of 18 to the other side of the globe, hoping to have a better chance in life. Together, we made the move to Houston, Texas, around the fall of 2012. There, we gradually learned the restaurant business. We picked up a few skills, from cooking to rolling sushi to customer service. I ran both the front of the house and the back. My partner mainly cooked in the back. Restaurant life is always hectic, with long hours and stress, yet the work was very rewarding.

     After 5 years of being away from home, my longtime business partner and also my best friend and I made the move back home. We decided to open Corner Seafood and Wings in Youngsville. We realized that restaurants around here did not serve fried chicken wings and fried seafood with lo mein and fried rice as side items. We figured that a new concept that offers a variety of menu items would be successful. We opened in January of 2018. Business did not flourish at first, but as soon as the quality of food improved and through word of mouth, our business kept picking up, and we gained a great number of loyal customers. To us, Corner Seafood and Wings is not just a business but rather our second home. We take pride in what we do. It’s a place where we make new friends every day, and we’re happy to see our customers enjoy our food. Moreover, starting this business has been our American dream in the land of opportunities.

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J L