From tears to filled seats: How Nakuru restaurateur’s cry for help sparked turnaround

For months, Harriet Akinyi silently carried the weight of a failing dream.

In November 2025, the Nakuru-based entrepreneur opened her restaurant with optimism and belief. The first month showed promise.

Sales were steady, and the business looked like it was finding its footing. But by early December, everything changed.

“From the first week of December until now… things were really bad. Like really, really bad,” Harriet recalls.

Daily sales that once ranged between Sh15,000 and Sh19,000 plummeted to less than Sh1,000. Some days, there were no customers at all. Yet the bills didn’t stop. Stock still had to be bought. Staff still had to be paid.

“I asked myself a lot of questions. I looked at the amount of money that I’d invested and the fact that sales are better than even profit at first, because business has to grow,” she says.

As the weeks dragged on, Harriet did what many small business owners do when hope begins to thin, she dug deeper into her own pockets.

“So I’m taking money, the little that I had anyway, injecting it into the business, and there’s no outcome,” she explains. “You send stock, it reaches a point where you send stock, you sell it, you wait… no one shows up.”

Behind the scenes, the emotional toll was devastating.

“It was heartbreaking. I pushed myself to the point where I spent all my money and I was left with zero,” Harriet says. “Imagine I spent all my money and I was left with zero and I didn’t have sales completely.”

One day stood out more painfully than the rest.

“Imagine, there was a day we closed with Sh324,” she says.

Harriet kept her struggle hidden from her employees. She would leave work early, inventing excuses, and cry alone.

With no money left and no clear path forward, Harriet reached a breaking point. Not knowing what else to do, she turned to social media, not for fame, but for release.

“I made that video out of hopelessness,” she says. “I believed I’m not the only one. There’s no one who has money to help you. Everyone is going through something. Everyone has a burden they’re carrying.”

She posted the video on TikTok, sharing her raw truth about her failing restaurant and her near decision to give up.

“I asked myself, what else can I do? I said, let me make a video because I’ve tried and it looks like there’s no hope.”

She never imagined what would happen next.

The video struck a nerve.

Within hours, it began circulating widely. Kenyans resonated with her honesty, her vulnerability, and her courage. What followed was nothing short of extraordinary.

The restaurant was suddenly packed.

“The video went viral, and Kenyans showed up,” Harriet says.

Customers flooded in so quickly that the restaurant ran out of seating. What had once been a quiet, struggling space transformed into a buzzing hub of support, conversation, and solidarity.