Daughter posts TikTok of dad’s empty California restaurant. Now business is booming
Business has taken off at a once empty restaurant in California’s Bay Area thanks to TikTok, news outlets reported.
Watching her parents wait around for customers to come into their Vietnamese noodle restaurant in Santa Rosa made Jennifer Le feel sad for her parents, she shared in a seven-second video on TikTok on Jan. 18.
“It makes me so sad to see my parents just wait for customers to walk through the door to eat at their Vietnamese restaurant,” she wrote on the short clip, set to an emotional song with the lyrics “I don’t care how long it takes” in the background.
The video pans from her dad at the order counter of Lee’s Noodle House to show the empty restaurant and then zooms into him looking toward the door and twiddling his fingers.
“TikTok do your thing & help support my (parents’) Vietnamese restaurant,” she wrote in the caption with a frowning face. “My parents haven’t been having that many customers & been feeling stressed dealing with financial issues. If you want to check it out, they make delicious Vietnamese food.”
The video went viral with more than a million views. Thousands of people pledged to eat there soon in the comments.
“I have Doctor’s appointment in Santa Rosa on Friday. Usually after my appointment I go to Panera’s for lunch. Lee’s Noodle House will be my Lunch,” someone wrote.
“I ate here 3 days a week when I was in Santa Rosa for a wine harvest season, the food is so special and your parents are so nice!” someone else said.
“Your mom and dad are among the hardest working, family oriented people I know,” someone else wrote, adding that the parents “want nothing less than the best” for their kids. Jennifer Le replied that the comment made her tear up.
“It’s been like, really slow, and I think a lot of people left because of the pandemic and the fires. …I felt really sorry for them,” Le, 21, told KGO. “My dad, he would always talk about how he’s stressed, and he’s, like, tired of just waiting around, where we have to, like, close early.”
The station interviewed Kelly Smith, who was having lunch at the restaurant.
“His daughter is on TikTok pleading to the public to help her dad because he was running out of business,” Smith told the station. “I saw that and it broke my heart.”
Le’s dad, Vuong Lee, told The Press Democrat the video made him “very emotional.”
“A lot of new (faces) come check it out and try our food,” he told the outlet. “I appreciate that she help us a lot, because before … business was very dead.”
This story was originally published February 10, 2023 at 4:15 PM with the headline "Daughter posts TikTok of dad’s empty California restaurant. Now business is booming."
