Pho Cyclo Owner Advocates for Immigrant-Owned Businesses
Pho Cyclo Owner Advocates for Immigrant-Owned Businesses
Nationwide, immigrants own 53 percent of the grocery stores, 38 percent of the restaurants, and 43 percent of the liquor stores, according to AS/COA's and Fiscal Policy Institute report.
In Washington, 15 percent of all business owners are foreign-born, according to the Immigration Policy Center, and in Seattle the figure is even higher. Many of these businesses in the food and beverage arena must regularly cope with cultural and language barriers. This can make growing a business, and learning and adapting to changing laws like the recently approved $15-an-hour minimum-wage mandate, a struggle. But there are ways these businesses can, and do, receive help.
Taylor Hoang, owner of Seattle’s Pho Cyclo Café, is on the forefront of that effort. Hoang—the daughter of Vietnamese immigrant Lien Dang, owner of Seattle’s beloved Huong Binh restaurant—is working to grow and educate immigrant-owned businesses via two channels: a new website she’s co-founded, ethnicseattle.com, and the recently established nonprofit Ethnic Business Coalition (EBC), of which she is the executive director....
...She’s right. Nationwide, immigrants own 53 percent of the grocery stores, 38 percent of the restaurants, and 43 percent of the liquor stores, according to a recent report by the Americas Society/Council of the Americas and the Fiscal Policy Institute...
