When TikTok food reviewer Gabriel Rivera DMed Natendrea Jones about her seafood this spring, she assumed it was a prank.
“I thought somebody was playing a joke,” Jones, 36, told Business Insider.
The South Carolina native had spent years trying to turn her cooking into a full-time business. She grew up surrounded by home cooking and began earning money young, first by preparing salads for neighbors and family cookouts, then by doing hair and nails.
Cooking remained a side hustle for more than a decade. Jones made seafood platters for friends and occasionally sold pans, but hair and nails paid the bills.
A viral food review brought 300 orders overnight
Jones had been posting her food on Facebook Marketplace for years. The platform didn’t strike her as unusual: As a hairstylist and nail technician, she’d previously used Craigslist to find clients.
“I would always post on Facebook Marketplace because that was like my Craigslist,” she said. “I was a Craigslist girl.”
Meanwhile, Rivera had built a following of more than 2 million on TikTok by ordering food through Facebook Marketplace and reviewing it from his car. When he found Jones’ listing, he offered her $200 to make him anything she wanted.
Jones prepared a pan overflowing with snow crab legs, lobster, shrimp, oysters, and fixings. It was not yet a menu item, she said, but it would soon become known as the “Gabriel Special.”
When Rivera posted his glowing review in May — “her seasoning is on another level,” he said between bites — Jones woke up to a flood of orders.
“I checked my Square. I had literally over 300 orders,” she said. “I dropped my phone. I dropped to my knees.”
Jones said she generated $50,000 in sales over the following two weeks and later surpassed six figures in sales. She used some of the money to buy supplies, such as new pots and pans.
Going viral created new problems
The sudden growth was exciting, but it was also difficult to manage. Jones enlisted help from family members early on, refunded some orders, and said some customers waited as long as a month for their food.
“There’s no way I can do 100 orders in a day,” she said. “This type of motion is new to me.”
The pace eventually caught up with her. About three weeks after the review went live, Jones said she had to pause orders for a day to reset and catch up on sleep.
“The adrenaline was there, but I crashed,” she said.
Since then, Jones has built more structure into the business. Customers order through her website, which adjusts pickup dates based on demand. She uses preorders to determine how much inventory she needs and now schedules pickup windows. On busy days, she said, her home-kitchen operation can handle 50 to 60 orders.
She still gets inquiries through Facebook Marketplace, but said most sales now come through Instagram and TikTok, where she has built sizable followings.
The business behind the seafood platter
Jones’ best-selling platters are not cheap to produce. She buys seafood in bulk, along with fresh corn, potatoes, garlic, butter, edible flowers, packaging, and other ingredients. She estimates that she spends roughly $20,000 a month on supplies, though costs fluctuate based on order volume and seafood prices.
“People just say, ‘More money, more problems,'” she said. “Sometimes I’ll have moments where I don’t see money at all — the money is gone, but it comes right back because that’s a business.”
Her signature sauce is central to the business, she said. Jones spent nearly eight years refining it and is protective of the recipe.
“My sauce is everything — because anybody can make a seafood boil, but how is your sauce?” she said. “I make my sauce from scratch and love and magic.”
The business is named Red’s Garlic Seafood after her late father, who was known as “Big Red.” He was a chef who had hoped to open a family restaurant, Jones said.
Her next goal is a food truck, though she’s taking her time to secure the vehicle, permits, and licenses needed to operate it.
“I want to do everything the smart way,” she said.
Eventually, she hopes to open a brick-and-mortar restaurant. For now, she said she focuses on making each platter with the same care she brought to Rivera’s order — the one that changed her business overnight.
“I make sure every pan has the flavors that it needs,” she said. “I put the love and effort into the pan.”
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