Get to Know Queen West Businesses

EDITED BY: GRACE CAMERON, EDITOR & PUBLISHER OF JAMAICANEATS MAGAZINE (@JAMAICA NEATSMAGAZINE) AND PHOTOS BY SELINA MCCALLUM (@SHOTBYSELINA)

Celebrating Local Business Owners

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 business, 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.

Jebril Jalloh Owner, Get Fresh Company, 498 Queen Street West

I grew up in the Jane and Weston Road area. It wasn’t the greatest neighbourhood, but I had a dream that one day I would have my own clothing store. I figured the store would be located around Lawrence and Weston Road, that’s as big as my imagination could take me. But then I started losing friends…to drugs, crime and gun violence...and my mother passed away when I was 15. After my mother died, I tried living with my maternal grandmother Mildred Robinson, but I couldn’t abide by her strict, old-school Jamaican rules and she didn’t understand my drive to have my own business. We were both in a lot of pain. She had lost her daughter and I had lost my mom. I left and couch surfed for months. Then one day a friend was shot and killed. We had planned to drive to Kingston to look at a store. But he was shot on the same day that he was to pick me up. At that point, I felt stuck and remember telling my brother and a close friend that if I didn’t get out of the neighbourhood I would be dead or in jail. I was lucky enough to meet a man from Mississauga who was in the printing business and who also sold clothes. He gave me his business card and told me to call him if I ever moved to Mississauga. So, I did. I was 17 or 18, and he introduced me to other people and to the Remix Project. (Remix helps young people from marginalized communities who want to enter the creative industries or further their formal education.) I did parties and special events and, as a Remix participant, interned for two wardrobe stylists for several months. From there I started my own business, first with a pop-up shop at Spadina and Richmond, selling hats that I bought from a wholesaler in Los Angeles. It was a success. I then did pop-ups in Montreal and Edmonton and launched an online store in 2011…just when Canada Post workers went on strike. This was followed by another setback when I tried to open a concept space (clothing, photography and barber) in Liberty Village with two other people. After making a deposit and completing three months of renovations, the landlord was giving us the runaround. It became so stressful, I walked out and went to stay with a friend in Atlanta. At that point, I didn’t know what to make of my life. But a week later I received a call from a man named Bruce who wanted to talk because he heard I was opening a store. I didn’t tell him that I had walked out on that venture. Instead, I flew back to Toronto and met Bruce who gave me the racks and space in the back of his family’s store on Queen Street (my present location). Six months later he gave me the opportunity to buy him out due to various health crises in his family and because the business had become too much for him to operate. This is how Get Fresh was born. That was 2011. I was 23 and the only black businessman in the neighbourhood. I had never worked in retail before and had to learn how to manage a staff, deal with the corporate world, handle point of sale as well as other aspects of business. Now I’ve had this store longer than I was in school. Through this journey I’ve learned not to block my blessings and to never give up. I believe everything happens for a reason. Business was great up to the start of the pandemic in March 2020. We were the first company to do a sneaker collaboration with the Puma brand and the first clothing company and store sponsored by an alcohol brand, Remy Martin, among many accomplishments. Two thousand and nineteen was one of the best years. Get Fresh was the official pop-up venue for the NBA all-star weekend in Toronto and during Caribana weekend we had a big block party on Queen Street with 4,000 people. We also rented a 3,500 square foot space in Square One, Mississauga, for a restaurant pop up. It went so well, we were asked to stay and lease the space for another year. I turned down the opportunity because I just had a gut feeling. I’m glad I did because the store would’ve been closed during COVID and I would’ve been stuck with the lease. I love Queen Street and have played a role in developing the community, so the situation during the pandemic has been emotionally hard. It’s tough to see friends go and to let go of staff, some of whom I’ve watched grow over the last six or seven years. Being a black businessman, it’s important for me to highlight black businesses owners, especially the men who can sometimes be distracted by situations that don’t benefit us. I also love to talk to kids who don’t see enough examples of black businessmen because it’s the basketball players and rappers who are usually highlighted. As for my grandmother Mildred, she has come to realize that her grandson has it together. We are best friends now. I talk to her every day, we hang out together and I take her everywhere with me. While we’ve recently closed our Get Fresh Queen Street West location to pursue global online presence and pop ups to represent Toronto, we credit our roots to Queen West.