“Thank You, Come Again.”
Coronavirus has harmed family-owned Asian businesses in Seattle, Washington.
Story and photos by Maks Moses
Body temperature: 98.96°F.
Heart rate: 110 beats per minute.
Respiratory rate: 16 breaths per minute.
These are the vital signs of a 35-year-old man sitting in the waiting room of an urgent care facility in Snohomish County, Washington for concerns over a dry cough, fever and CDC-issued disease warning for travelers leaving Wuhan, China. The date is Jan. 19, and the patient is the first confirmed COVID-19 carrier in the U.S.
Fifty miles away, Natsuyoshi Toyoda, who goes by Mr. Toyoda, is frying tamagoyaki in a signature square pan in the back of his sushi restaurant. He can hear the clink and scrape of his son Ty sharpening knives before carving today’s ahi. The two have been working since the morning, cutting the fish, preparing the vegetables and cooking the rice for opening that evening. Tonight, Mr. Toyoda will serve over 100 guests from a metaphorical captain’s station behind the sushi bar.
And this is Mr. Toyoda’s dream.
“It’s love. It’s passion. I put passion into the process of the food. Our secret ingredient,” Mr. Toyoda said.
Mr. Toyoda is from Nagano, a rural city in the northern Japanese mountains. He grew up with 11 other siblings, parented by two apple orchard pickers, Takeo and Tsuruku Toyoda. For Mr. Toyoda, a life in Nagano meant a life as a farmer. So at 18, Mr. Toyoda traveled to Tokyo to learn the traditional art of sushi making, which meant rising through the ranks of a restaurant, starting as a dishwasher. By 1984, Mr. Toyoda was ready to build his own restaurant in the U.S., so he traveled there by himself. He soon met Helen Lee at a restaurant, who he married a year later.
The two opened Toyoda Sushi in the spring of 1989.
Over the next 30 years, Toyoda Sushi grew its reputation in the surrounding area by blending hard-core traditional Japanese techniques with the same friendliness of a local American burger shop. With Mr. Toyoda welcoming each customer with a smile and building relationships across the sushi bar, Toyoda Sushi was able to secure its spot in the Seattle area and prosper a successful business.
“We had a high chance of failing. We didn’t know if it would work, but we had hope that people would spread the word,” Helen said.
Throughout the late 1980s and 90s, King County’s Asian population boomed. The Asian population first began growing during the 1965 Immigration Act, which saw the country’s largest influx of immigrants in its modern history.
The steady integration of Asian residents, predominantly Vietnamese, Filipino and Japanese, resulted in a 17% Asian population in King County in 2017, up significantly from 10.8% in 2000. Now, Asian residents are by far the largest non-white population in King County, making up 19% of the total population. That’s about 450,000 people.
On Lake City Way in Seattle, Toyoda Sushi was one of the first Japanese restaurants to open in the area. At first, Mr. Toyoda and Helen were worried about opening a restaurant, considering the high investment of starting a business.
And until now, that was the story of Toyoda Sushi.
In March, Toyoda Sushi, along with hundreds of Asian-owned stores, were among the countless businesses left out of service when Washington became the first state with a confirmed case of COVID-19.
“The Chinese businesses were the first to get hit,” said Yuki Toyoda, Mr. Toyoda’s son.
In a wave of fear and confusion over the nature of the virus, Chinese businesses specifically were caught first with an almost dead-stop in business. For most, that meant no business and a quick mandatory closure of all dine-in services. April saw zero business as the country reacted to the virus.
On top of a sudden drop in business, Asian restaurants around Seattle are dealing with acts of vandalism and blatant racism. In April, active white-supremacist group Patriot Front vandalized buildings across Seattle, Maple Valley and Issaquah with their promotional material.
Eric Chan, owner of Seattle Chinatown’s Jade Garden, saw these men. They were dressed in hoodies, sunglasses and hats, and wraps completely covered their faces.
“At first I was like, what are these people all about? They just kept looking at me when they were crossing the street. They walked by me and put a sticker on my building. As they were leaving, they kept looking back and staring at me. And when I looked at the sticker it read, ‘Better Dead than Red.’”
Like the Toyodas, the Chan family has owned Jade Garden for over a decade and seen the international district grow over the years. Jade Garden has become a symbol in the community: family owned and family ran. Even amid its success, Eric has still seen a darker side of what a community can be.
“You see everybody’s true colors during this time,” Eric said. “I had Chinese customers, loyal customers, spread rumors about my restaurant. ‘We’re dirty,’ Chinatown is dirty,’ ‘stay away.’ We would get a normal call, and everything would be normal. They would order a bunch of things and I would write them down, and then at the end, they would ask if we served bat.”
This wasn’t the first time Jade Garden had been the victim of a racially-charged attack. In March, Eric came to the restaurant to see one of the restaurant’s windows shattered.
But the issues that Asian-owned businesses currently face are deeper than just racist attacks. This pandemic isn’t just any monster, it’s a hydra growing two more snarling heads each time the previous one is slain.
“To see that, it was a punch to the gut. I pretty much almost cried,” Eric said. “What did we do to deserve this? Because my mom, my sister, my brother, my wife, my uncle, my aunt, my dad, we pour our soul into this.”
Later that week, friends and customers of Jade Garden helped cover the damage by boarding up the windows and painting over the wood.
“If we fix it, they might break it again,” Eric said. “So we decided to just board up our whole establishment.”
At the end of May, Jade Garden was broken into. Two burglars shattered the front door and emptied the store’s cash register, Eric said.
There are two more challenges restaurant owners face amid stay-at-home orders: unemployment pay and delivery services.
An average restaurant employee makes Seattle’s $13.50 minimum wage. At 32 hours a week, that employee makes $432. Add an extra $50 in tips. Using Washington State Employment Security Department’s unemployment benefits calculator, this employee should receive $241 in weekly benefits, which they are eligible for if they were laid off.
Enter the CARES act.
This $2 trillion bill was signed into law on March 27, boosting weekly unemployment benefits by $600 until the end of July. Employees can now make $841 a week compared to the $432 they made working.
“Do you want people to work or do you not want people to work? It’s a big tug of war, and it’s a big clusterfuck confusion,” Eric said.
Before coronavirus, food delivery services like Postmates, DoorDash and UberEats were operating in the Wild West of food-delivery commissions. UberEats earned 30% commission on all revenue earned from the sale of the food, with an additional fee billed to the customer for delivery and service.
However, in late April, Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan approved a 15% commission cap on delivery services, a small win for restaurants.
“But these companies are finding ways to tax us even more,” Eric said.
States have market facilitator taxes, which are taxes owed from third party sellers like Amazon and eBay at the point of sale. These companies operate without a physical presence in states, therefore, they avoid property taxes.
But for restaurants, this means their 15% revenue loss can reach an even higher number. Eric said at the end of the day, UberEats gets 27% of each sale.
In the past few months, Jade Garden’s sales have transitioned from 85% in-store pickup-up and 15% delivery to 60% in house and 40% delivery.
The CARES act does offer a two-year 0.5% loan to small businesses, but 75% of that loan must be allocated to payroll, and only a quarter is left for operating costs. Considering how uncertain the virus’ trajectory is over the course of the next year, two years may not be enough time to bounce back and pay the loan.
“My mortgage payment hasn’t changed, our bills haven’t changed. We’re still here paying the same amount, but with all of these obstacles ahead of us as a small business,” Eric said.
For Mr. Toyoda and Helen, there is hope for Toyoda Sushi.
“Now I think we’ve got the flow. We and others have stayed afloat thankfully from the support and help from the community. That is a testament to the love we and Asian businesses continue to pour into our service for our neighborhoods,” Mr. Toyoda said.
For Jade Garden and Toyoda Sushi, each passing hand from the cutting board to the plate represents more than just a transaction. It’s a deep generational history filled with hardships, but equal parts resilience, growth and triumph. Over the next months, the future is uncertain. People will be laid off, communities will be evolved and the framework of restaurants may change forever. What remains will be a testament to the resolve and power of a country, and a testament to the power of the Asian America.