Chino Latino - Restaurant Owner Reveals Secrets to Business Success
Intro
Are you looking at starting an ethnic restaurant? What does that path look like in a practical way? Today, we are talking to Elias Dean about his success journey. We discuss his restaurant business, and the steps he took to get to where he is today. Join us in this conversation!
Guest Bio
Elias Dean is the owner of the Chino Latino restaurant in Grand Forks, North Dakota. He is originally from Somalia, but moved to the United States in 2012. He had his first restaurant in 2016, when he was 25 years old.
Q: Why Grand Forks?
In bigger cities, the competition is just too high. When I first moved here, I moved to San Diego. I lived there for three months and then I left. You would get a check at the end of the week for $900, but when rent is $1300 and gas is expensive, your money is gone right away. In Grand Forks, we have more jobs than people, so people are in high demand.
Q: What Are Some of the Challenges You Face?
Workforce is the biggest. Ethnic food has to be made from scratch, and it is hard to find people who are used to that kind of food preparation. Sometimes, people won’t even admit they don’t know how to do the work. They will just say, ‘let me go and smoke a cigarette’ and they won’t come back.
Q: How Do You Know What People Like?
I didn’t do traditional consumer research. I follow a few pages where people complain about restaurants. You hear what people are complaining about, and see if you can make something positive about their complaints.
Q: What Are Some Successes in Your Industry
Working for yourself is very good, but comes with a lot of challenges. I was very lucky, when compared to other ethnic restaurants. Many of them fail because they only target their own ethnic groups. There are about 2000 Somalis in Grand Forks, which means I only have 1-2 consistent customers. When people want to go to an ethnic restaurant, they want the delicacies from that place. That is very expensive. It is much easier and cheaper to get fried chicken down the street. I had to change my model, and once I did that, I began seeing success.
An important part of having an ethnic restaurant is to reach outside of your own ethnic group for business. Africans tend to have a big lunch and a small dinner. White people are the opposite. They have a small lunch and a big dinner. Both groups have to budget their meal costs, and it is important to find a way to be in their budget to attract their business.
Q: How Did COVID Impact Your Business?
COVID was actually a blessing for me. Many of the restaurants in town make most of their money from alcohol [bar/restaurant combinations are common], but I was just making food. So, when everything shut down, that’s when people saw my food and things just exploded from there. COVID year was the year I paid off a huge part of my house.
The negative side to COVID was that I was working in the restaurant myself. They were long days. I actually brought my couch and tv to work. I would work hard over meals, then clean and relax before the next rush started. It paid off.
Q: What Advice Do You Have For Those Who Are Here?
My father sent me to the best schools he could so I could become a doctor. He wanted me to learn medicine, but that was not for me. I realized that I was doing it for him and not for me. A lot of people, especially we Africans, don’t go to school for something we like. At the end of the day, we are all trying to earn money. If people learn skillful work that earn them money, we will grow better.
Summary
Every job I do, I take pride in. Any job I do, I put my 100% into it. That way, even if I walk away tomorrow, it has value. If you give up, you lose the value and the time you invested. Look at where you are now and do that job well, while not losing sight of what you desire to do.
