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ABOUT THE JERK PIT

About

Lisa Waddell-Nash: Aspiring lawyer turned restaurateur now with over 18 years of experience in business

Write up by Candice Stewart / Our Today editor

When you have aspirations to follow a particular road in life and then change your mind on multiple occasions, people tend to identify you as an indecisive person who does not know what they want.



In many cases, indecision is not a bad thing. For Lisa Waddell-Nash, changing her road map to success was all part of a bigger picture which has led her to being a successful restaurateur and being in business with ‘The Jerk Pit’ for a little over 18 years.


In what started out with an initial two people and then four in 2005, The Jerk Pit has grown to a team of 20 people seeing to the day-to-day operations of the authentic Jamaican-owned restaurant located in College Park, Maryland in the United States (US).

Though successful, the journey to the Jerk Pit did not start out as a well-planned and thought out mission. Waddell-Nash, who has a degree in Communications from Howard University, originally hoped to become a lawyer with no intentions of being an entrepreneur in the food and beverage industry.

FROM LAW TO COMMUNICATIONS TO FOOD

“Initially, I wanted to be a lawyer. When I graduated from high school, I left Jamaica and moved to Miami. I then attended community college for two years after which, I transferred to Howard to study. While in community college, I looked into what I wanted my major to be and realised that law school was not going to work. I noted that in addition to the first four years of study, I had to enroll for more school. I said, ‘no, that’s too much school for me’.”, she shared in an interview with Our Today.


She did some introspection and said that based on her outgoing and lively personality, she would be good for television as a news anchor, radio as disc jock or show host, and possibly even film.


“At Howard, I hosted a radio programme at the on-campus station on Friday nights for four hours. It was a late night show from 10pm – 2am. That’s when I got my feet wet and truly went into the field of communications,” Waddell-Nash said.


“I interned at this radio station for three months and that’s when I realised that the salary was not what I needed it to be. I looked into it and said in order for me to be a news anchor, I’d probably have to be a reporter that chases ambulances and that sort of thing. Doing that was not gonna work either. I then realised that I needed to do something else. I started selling insurance and got experience in the marketing aspect of company products. After that, I went into the telecommunications field, got laid off on two separate occasions, and then came The Jerk Pit,” she continued.


While she sold insurance, Waddell-Nash recalled working so hard that she never missed a day of work. A time came where she wanted to take a vacation to go to Jamaica. “I wanted to take five days but my boss, at the time, told me I had to be report to work the next work day. I pled my case with him to say that I hadn’t taken a vacation in years. His response what that if I didn’t come back on Monday, I shouldn’t come back to work. I never went back,” she said


She said that her experience of continuously changing her mind and being laid off taught her many lessons over the years to aid in communication, marketing, entrepreneurship that now fuels The Jerk Pit.

“That’s when I decided that if I’m going to work this hard, I may as well work for myself. I was going from job to job and getting laid off with not much benefit. So, I figured that I should try and do something for me,” she said.

“My first entrepreneurial venture was selling coconut water. My mom used to send a case for me every week from Miami. I then started doing it on my own,” she added.



“While I was still working in the telecoms field, I used to import coconut water from Jamaica when Air Jamaica was still in business. I started distributing to all the Caribbean stores in the area. I then branched off into Tru Juice. I used to supply most of the Caribbean stores and restaurants in the area. When Air Jamaica stopped coming to Baltimore, it became challenging and I had to truck it from places like Miami and New York. After a while, I noticed that it wasn’t as profitable as I needed it to be. So, I phased that out as well,” she explained.


“We technically didn’t have a jerk pit. It was really grilling but we started small with a vision in mind. I bought something that was already established and then made it into my own along the way.

- Lisa Waddell-Nash

It was then that the blueprint for The Jerk Pit began to take form. An opportunity came when I found out that a friend of my mom loved grilling. My thought process was, ‘he can grill, and I love to host and entertain. So let’s try it out where, maybe, I could start a restaurant or hangout spot.


She shared that she loved the idea of what the Jamaican restaurant and lounge, Peppers, used to be, where people would hang out, eat, and chill. “That’s what I had in my mind. I said that I would love to do something like that up here. So, my mom’s friend and I spoke and discussed trying to start something small. That’s kinda how we started,” she explained.


She shared that there was a restaurant for sale in a strip mall that she bought and got started. She confessed that “we technically didn’t have a jerk pit. It was really grilling but we started small with a vision in mind. I bought something that was already established and then made it into my own along the way.” Five years later, they moved to a more ideal space that suited the vision. It was a stand-alone building where customers could sit outside and hang out. “That was more of what I envisioned, and, that’s where we’ve been located 13 years later,” she said.