E D IT E D BY: G R AC E C A M E R O N, E D ITO R & P U B L I S H E R O F JA M A I C A N E ATS M AG A Z I N E (@JA M A I C AN E ATS M AG A Z I N E) A N D P H OTO S BY S E L I N A M C C A L LU M (@S H OT BYS E L I N A)
C elebr at in g L o c a l Bu s i ne s s O wner s Alan Liu Owner, Salad King, 224 Queen Street West & 340 Yonge Street All roads lead to the family business. That’s a joke between me and my father. The family business, as we call it, started in 1890 with a restaurant owned by my paternal grandfather back in Hong Kong. He eventually owned two or three restaurants big enough to occupy whole buildings and prestigious enough to pop up in pre-roll ads that played before the movies in Hong Kong theatres. The restaurants were famous for their handmade Chinese moon cakes and although they’ve been closed for decades, my father still swears by those moon cakes made the old-fashioned way. Still, despite his success as a restaurateur, my grandfather wanted better for his children and sent my dad to England to study industrial engineering. My father enjoyed success in his chosen field, managing manufacturing plants in Hong Kong and across Southeast Asia. I followed on a similar path, studying electrical engineering at the University of Waterloo and becoming one of the youngest directors at Bell Mobility. But two generations, successful engineering careers and a century after my grandfather’s first restaurant, we were back in the family
business. This time in Toronto. My family moved to Canada in 1990, but when my mother, a teacher, and my father couldn’t find work in their fields, and stumbled upon the original Salad King restaurant on Gould Street (near Ryerson) they decided to buy it. At the time, it was a dingy hole in the wall with a mixed menu of peameal bacon sandwiches, hamburgers, French fries, pad Thai and chicken fried rice. They ran it for 20 years until 2010 when the building partially collapsed during one lunch period and the was subsequently condemned. My parents decided to relocate Salad King to 340 Yonge Street, near the original location. But seeing their stress over opening in a new location and their dilemma as to whether to retire, I decided to take over the business. And so, my father and I joke that no matter what, we always seem to come back to the family business. My career was going well and I could’ve kept on climbing the corporate ladder, but I was curious about doing my own thing and so I made the jump to entrepreneurship. What I’ve learned is that the restaurant business is incredibly difficult because it is so people intensive, unlike the tech world where one engineer makes products for hundreds and thousands of people. But it’s also a very intimate industry where customers and staff get to know each other and any decision bears results very quickly.
In January 2020, after 30 years of being in business, we signed a lease for our second location at Queen and McCaul…then COVID hit. We weren’t able to open until March of this year. We had no market, the bank and the government weren’t there to support us and we had a newly signed lease. Now that we’ve opened the new location, we find a neighbourhood that is in flux because of construction, and business in general is a lot more challenging due to increased competition and operating cost in Toronto. In the last 10 years, we’ve had to be more disciplined in watching our operating costs in order to stay in business. It’s positive and exciting, but nerve wracking. However, I’m pretty good at handling stress. I realize that if you come to expect the unexpected you learn to live with it. Stuff happens and you have to be honest with yourself and understand what is in your control. Stress kicks in when you try to control the unknown. Plus, Salad King has survived because, although we ’re a family busine ss, we operate professionally and some of our employees have been working with us for 25 years. In addition, we are clear on why we are in business. If you don’t know why you’re doing something, then you get lost. We’ve based ourselves on four guiding principles –operating a sound business; taking care of family and staff; giving back; and a great love of food and people. In our new location, we’ve met a lot of great neighbours, and customers from our Yonge Street location come by to show their support. So, we take it as a blessing that customers love what we do. We are grateful.
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