Difficulty sleeping related to the truck is more of a physical
difficulty just because it's so uncomfortable.
I guess now we have more difficulty sleeping just from the stress.
This is Yumpling, a popular New York City-based food truck that's been
serving Taiwanese-American fare since 2017.
The three co-founders, Howard, Christopher and Jeffrey were set to
open a restaurant in March 2020.
But right before opening day, New York City closed bars and
restaurants to slow the spread of Covid-19.
Unfortunately, the food truck has had to stop running just because
almost everyone is working from home.
On Friday, March 13th, the food truck staff noticed a big drop in
customers, just a day after Mayor Bill de Blasio declared a state of
emergency in New York City.
It's time now to declare a state of emergency in New York City.
Things were pretty OK, at least for a food truck.
And then Friday, there were very, very few customers.
Our staff was just standing around there like, you know, this is
really bad, this is getting pretty scary.
On a typical day, before the pandemic, Yumpling was selling up to
1,800 dumplings and serving around 300 customers during the
three-hour lunch shift.
I think we served maybe like fewer than 50 customers during the whole
day. So we actually ended up throwing out a lot of food.
We actually looked in to seeing if we could donate some of the food,
but there wasn't really any easy way for us to do so because all of
our food on the truck is made to order.
We don't have anything pre-packaged.
Shopping for inventory and ingredients also became a challenge when
people started panic-buying.
Acquiring inventory during this time is a pretty scary thing just
because there are shortages everywhere.
There is a Costco pretty close to our restaurant.
So I went there and when I turned the corner of one of the buildings,
I saw just a massive line.
So I asked, "What's going on?" I thought maybe there are sold out of
stuff. And people told me this is the line to get inside Costco.
And that line was over 100 people long.
On March 17th, they decided to temporarily stop running the truck.
The Yumpling co-owners were excited to open their new restaurant in
Queens in mid-March.
Our timing was pretty, pretty terrible on that front.
We were actually just pretty ecstatic until the end of February just
because our construction for the restaurant was finally done.
We were supposed to be open back in November, but for various
reasons, we couldn't get the proper permits for gas, for cooking
gas into the building.
So that was like a huge stress for us all.
So, you know, once the gas was in and everything was done, we were
just happy. We were like ready to go.
And then March came and the news just kept, you know, more and more
cases of corona. Now it's in the States.
Now it's in New York.
At that point, we're like, maybe, you know, this might become more
serious than we thought. We may not be able to open.
After running the numbers, they decided not to offer pickup or
delivery. It wouldn't be worth the cost.
One of the big negative things for us is we are a Taiwanese
restaurant. And because the coronavirus did kind of originate in
China, I do know a lot of people are kind of wary of abstaining from
like Asian food, Asian businesses.
So we weren't really sure how people would, you know, taken that, you
know, like opening up a new Asian restaurant in the midst of this all
happening. Since the restaurant hadn't yet opened and it has no sales
to report, it doesn't qualify for government aid.
For the food truck. they're looking into low-interest loans.
Right now their biggest expense is rent for the restaurant space.
We had about six months of working capital saved up.
Unfortunately, about 4 to 5 months of that working capital went
towards the huge delay we experienced during our build-out because of
the whole, you know, cooking gas situation.
So one thing I would've done differently is probably budgeted at least
12 months of working capital before we took on these projects so we
wouldn't be in as dire straits as we are now.
And, you know, I guess just played safe, especially, you know, if
you're investing a ton of money into a new business, you know, make
sure you have enough money to sustain you in the event like this.
If it were to ever happen again.
The three of us, the three partners, were just basically living off of
personal savings right now.
It was actually funny, the three of us kind of half jokingly we
discussed, you know, maybe we should just look for a part-time job.
You know, as long as we have the money to, you know, last until, you
know, this month or this year, we don't really have any plans of
giving up. I'm hoping everything gets better by the end of this year.
A great way to support restaurants is obviously try to order in maybe
a little more than usual.
You know, if you do see a restaurant owner or a restaurant employee,
just be nice.
If you have any advice to give them, give some advice.
But yeah, I guess when this is all over, go out and eat out as much
as you can, I guess.