Struggles of immigrant-led restaurants in Seattle during the COVID-19 era.

        Many restaurants managed and fought to stay open, but others had no choice but to shut down. In Seattle, restaurant owners have strong complaints about how their government handled the distribution of emergency funds. If you think about it, many tangible problems boil down to the issue of who has access to money and resources.

           Seattle is a vibrant city that hosts many diverse ethnicities, including immigrants and refugees. Some of these owners of immigrant-led restaurants share their vivid stories of how they and their families came to the United States.

Their Stories

Mehari

Bienmed Mehari recounted that when he arrived, he applied for asylum. He had to flee his home, Eritrea, a country located in East Africa. Seeking asylum means fleeing violence, difficulties, and persecution to enter a safer country. Mehari arrived in the U.S in 2011, so it has now been more than a decade. In 2012, he got his first job working at a 7-Eleven. In 2015, he had a business service that made him a good amount of money. He was able to save the money he made and opened a restaurant.

        He said, “In the business I was doing, I saw many people eat junk food, so I thought that I could make better and healthier food for them to eat!” Mehari said.

        In 2017, he was able to get contractors for the location on Nickerson Street and get a license to open his restaurant and named it “Sam’s Mediterranean Cuisine.” Before the Covid-19 era, he made good revenue thanks to the people from the surrounding offices and the university next to it. During the COVID-19 era, everyone went online, both the offices and the university. Due to receiving inconsistent income for two years, it was impossible to keep the restaurant open. He was losing money. On the one hand, there is the need to pay for more groceries, but on the other hand, there is the problem of making that revenue back.

Mehari also explained how tired he would get. He did all the work on his own because even when he was doing well before the COVID-19 era, he could still not afford to hire an employee to help.

       “The food industry is a hard business. It’s a 60% risk to open a restaurant; you work 14-16 hours a day, you do the shopping for groceries, pay the bills, and make sure the customers are taken care of. And the online delivery apps like Grubhub take 30% off of what you get. It’s hard,” Mehari said.

        In early 2022, he had to sell his restaurant. He initially leased the location for $145,000 but sold it for $40,000 because this was the only way not to have to continue paying for the lease. He said he is okay with taking a break and working on something else. He hopes to open a charity to help children in his home country in the future.

Spice Waala

        Uttam Mukherjee & Aakanksha Sinhaboth came from India to the U.S. a decade ago. In 2018, they said, “We have not found any food that we used to eat as we grew up.”     

First, they started their business selling street food at pop-up markets on the streets of South Lake Union because they wanted to bring authentic Indian food. Then, six months later, they opened their restaurant Spice Waala in 2019.

        They did not have previous experience opening a restaurant and were going through the learning process. They were learning what equipment to use and getting employees to work for them. He says the biggest hurdle was getting the word out to people and getting customers. Now, during and after COVID-19, the costs of most things increased. For example, chicken used to be 99 cents per pound. Now it is $2.20 per pound. They also import food from India, and that price also went up.

        Spice Waala was smart in maintaining its employees by giving them benefits. They pay them a living wage instead of a minimum wage. They have also created a safe space by asking them if they wanted to work during the pandemic. One decided to stay home, and they still supported them.

        Spice Waala was lucrative in signing up for all the delivery and takeout services even before COVID-19 started. They meticulously looked at their finances on a spreadsheet. They knew what to invest their funds in to be this “comfortable.” Especially the importance of investing in their employees, because they still want to ensure they are still there when the pandemic ends.   

Unfortunately, they were not eligible for fund resources provided by the government because they opened in 2019. The requirement was that 2020 sales were supposed to be lower than what they made in 2019. However, Spice Waala started making revenue in August 2019, so 2020 could not have been worse than 2019.

           They only got the first draw of the Paycheck Protection Program loan (PPP). The PPP is a loan given by the U.S. Small Business Administration that helped businesses during the pandemic crisis. Unfortunately, they did not receive the second draw. Nor the City of Seattle or the “Plate Fund” because they were not eligible.

Mukherjee said, “The revenue calculation gave hope to many small restaurants by saying we, the government, will give tens of thousands of dollars out and at the same time, and promised owners that if they close, they have a better chance of receiving the funds.” However, this idea only pushed restaurant owners to close down without caring for their employees because they needed to receive those funds.

Mukherjee spoke of immigrants and said that some need to take a different path. But, as he changed his tone, he said, “But of course, we don’t all lump them together, but some don’t have English as their first language, so they could not apply for these, and some are small and don’t have a big following, so they are not that famous.” Other struggles are that most work with fewer than five employees.

        He said what helped them stay open was introducing special menu items and new dishes that attracted new customers. However, being cost-focused also helped them As a result, their revenue slowly got better, and they were able to stay afloat.

Taurus Ox

Khampaeng Panyathong is one of the owners of Taurus Ox with his wife Jenessa Sneva, who is the second owner. His family is from Laos, and they were refugees in Thailand during the war and then immigrated to Seattle in 1987.

        He said, “The restaurant is called Taurus Ox because it represents my birthday […] It’s Taurus season in the year of the ox. It’s also Laotian cuisine, so that is why it’s called Taurus Ox Laos cuisine.”

        To open the door before Covid-19, they spent about a quarter-million dollars for their “small place” in Seattle. Then, during COVID-19, they were able to get funding through the PPP loan, the Economic Injury Disaster Loan, and then later with the Employee Retention Credit loans.

        “Hardships before Covid-19, opening the restaurant–a business like this is always a gamble, so you do not know if it’s going to work. You are already like, let us say $200,000 in debt and no sales because the restaurant isn’t open yet, so the whole time, you are just freaking out if you are gonna make sales or not. Then, as soon as we opened the door, we started having first sales like the first day, the first week, I knew that we were gonna be okay,” Panyathong said. “The money was coming in; I knew that we could pay off loans. Everything felt good. Then Covid-19 hit. That’s where it got weird. We are talking about three months, during which our sales dropped by 80%. We needed that whole 100% to make rent, and now we only have 20%. So, then you have to get creative.

You have to let everyone go, adjust your menu, and sign up for all the delivery apps.”

Panyathong did not want to say that he is in the position to advise others about deciding to close down, he says “there is no advice I would give […] but if I were to someone who is looking to open a restaurant for the first time, I would say just make sure your food is really really good because if you can’t provide service or a bar or a place for people to hang out, at least they will think about your food if they are hungry and at home, they will crave your food, and they will order that for delivery.”

        To stay open, they had to let go of all their employees. The only ones working were the owners. Because they do not get paid overtime, and they only make money if the restaurant makes money. They are working 60 to 80 hours a week. Anything over 40 hours is overtime. He shared that before the pandemic, not many people knew them. However, more people learned about them through the pandemic and delivery apps. He optimistically said that, now having been open for over two years, more people know who they are and have a good restaurant experience. Now there are more people than just the returning customers.

        He says, “So as I look into year three, year four, year five, there will be more people in the fifth year who know of this place.”

Promises of the Government

     In the end, these governmental resources boasted about being able to help small businesses, but never gave the money to those who needed it the most.

           According to District Councilmember Andrew J. Lewis, the City of Seattle provided grants of $5,000, $10,000, and $20,000 to small businesses through its stabilization fund to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. More than $10 million were supposed to be distributed through these funds.

        The City of Seattle also provided several startup resources, such as free accounting and financial consulting services, and connected prospective small businesses with incubators, accelerators, and financing sources.

        The Office of Economic Development put together an infographic that shows data on a dashboard about stabilization grants given by the Seattle Small Business Stabilization Fund to small businesses. The data contains many restaurants that received some financial help. Among this list, only Spice Waala received one loan. Taurus Ox and Sam’s Mediterranean Cuisine have not received anything. Director of Communication and Strategy Karissa Braxton said they are still processing the final grant round that opened up applications in October 2021. It will be updated once the process is complete. The data also shows that the highest percentage of people who received the funds are White people at 34% and Asians at 34%. Following that are Black or African Americans at 12%, Hispanics at 6%, and other races are 12%.

Solutions

     As the owners mentioned above, most immigrants could not receive funds for several reasons. For example, not having the ability to understand English fully, or not having enough resources like employees or money. That is when non-profit organizations like Project Feast and Seattle Good Business Network come into the picture.

        Van Nguyen is the executive director of Project Feast, a non-profit organization located in Kent. It trains refugees and immigrants to work on their culinary skills and helps by giving funds to help them grow their businesses. In addition, it runs training programs for English Language Learners who have little to no prior work experience in the food industry in the United States. Project Feast receives funds, charity, and grants from private loans or the government. For example, the Washington Office of Government Affairs, the International Refugee Council, and Refugees of Washington have helped them receive funds.

        Maria DeLeo, like Nguyen, also works for a non-profit organization called Seattle Good Business Network. She specifically works with Good Food Economy, a Good Food Kitchens program; these channels work with immigrant-led restaurants. Good Food Kitchens is a King County food aid, economic development, and local food resiliency initiative. Individual donations and funds from public and private organizations directly assist restaurants that prepare meals for those in need. At the same time, they help local farms produce and develop long-term local supply chain connections.

           Fortunately, these non-profit organizations are making a difference in the lives of immigrant restaurant owners today. Seattle and its government need to be more aware of immigrants’ struggles and provide better help. It is not just about emergency funding, but also about distributing the money proportionally to those who need it most.