The Brooklyn food scene has welcomed a new shop celebrating Caribbean culture. Sebastian’s Spices and Slices is a pizza shop offering slices inspired by traditional West Indian recipes. It opened in the Little Caribbean section of the Flatbush neighborhood.
11-year-old entrepreneur Sebastian Wilson founded the shop with the help of his parents.
“My mom works a lot, and I want to work a lot so I could, like, get my own money,” he said in an interview with PIX 11. “My parents are hard workers, and I just want to be a hard worker like them.”
View this profile on Instagram
Recipes for the slices are inspired by his family’s homemade oxtail, jerk chicken and saltfish. His mother and stepfather are from Trinidad and Grenada, respectively.
“My mom taught me how to do the recipes,” Wilson said. “I used to eat those sometimes and they were good, yeah, my mom used to cook them all the time”.
Due to child labor laws, Wilson can only do so much around the shop, but does manage to still help out with chores and pizza making. His parents involve him in brainstorming ideas to grow the brand and design the store. The end goal is to have Wilson take over the shop.
“I kind of want to be there with him, and obviously, there’s a time I’ll have to let go, but I’m trying to provide the things that maybe my parents provided for me and more,” Wilson’s mother Natalie Lamming said.
Wilson hopes his venture inspires other kids his age to pursue what fuels them.
“It doesn’t matter what age you are,” he said. “You can still have your dreams come true.”
Sebastian’s Spices and Slices is located at 1828 Nostrand Ave in Brooklyn, NY.
