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A Menlo Park restaurant owner is trying a new tactic to help address the Silicon Valley restaurant worker shortage, due largely to the high cost of housing.

Jason Kwan, who owns Jason’s Cafe, Chef Kwan’s and Yum Cha Palace in Menlo Park, said he began this year to rent a nearby apartment for four of his employees who work at his newest restaurant in town, Yum Cha Palace.

At his various businesses, he said, he has more than 50 employees, many of whom live relatively nearby, such as in Mountain View and Palo Alto. But for four of his most needed employees who live far away, he has offered them a spot in an apartment to sleep in after work hours.

This way, they don’t have to make the grueling commute from their residences in Stockton, Sacramento or San Francisco each day.

They stay in the apartment for four or five days, he said, before returning home.

He said having them nearby makes it easier to run the new restaurant, which closes each day at 10:30 p.m. – on the later side for a city known for going dark around 9.

People who have to drive hours each day to get to work may quit, he said.

He declined a request to interview some of these employees because he said they do not speak English.

Yum Cha Palace opened in January at the former Su Hong restaurant site at 1039 El Camino Real in Menlo Park. It is open for lunch daily from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and for dinner from 5 to 10:30 p.m.

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8 Comments

  1. For many years when Su Hong operated in Menlo Park, a cadre of employees lived in a small apartment complex near Nativity School.

    We used to call the place the Su Hong Arms.

    I wonder if the new guy is utilizing the same complex, or somewhere else.

  2. My husband and I know Jason and have eaten – for years – at his diner, Jason’s, on El Camino and lately at the Yum Cha Palace. We also get takeout at his takeout shop that used to be Su Hong to Go. Jason is a lovely man, good to his employees – the ones at Jason’s have all been there for years! – and we like and respect him very much. I’m not surprised that he houses the 4 employees – it’s a smart thing to do, it’s good business but mostly he’s just a very nice guy. We’ll continue to patronize his businesses!
    Baker and Earl Junghans, Menlo Park

  5. I don’t understand the whole ‘charitable’ spin of this article. EPA and Belle Haven are already crammed with two families in two-bedroom apartments and 4 people in a studio! This is the norm for lower-wage workers throughout the area. We are seriously over-crowded already. I’m surprised that this is some kind of community-benefit story.

  7. Thank you Careful Reader, but not to be cynical, there is not a complete disclosure of who pays what to whom and how much or if at all. The article only states that Jason rents an apartment that is used by his employees.

    If I was a local contractor and rented a house in Atherton, then overloaded it with my workers so they wouldn’t have to drive back to Stockton and Manteca, I wouldn’t be invited to a Circus Club charity gala in my honor. Quite the opposite.

  8. @really – if you owned a house and allowed workers to live in it so they don’t need a 2 hour daily commute, you deserve credit. It sounds more like a measure of snobbery than charity as to whether it’s a big house in Atherton full of lots of workers or a set of small apartments in EPA.

    Of course, it’s worth noting that the reason “we are overcrowded” is that cities on the Peninsula have resolutely refused to allow many new apartments since the downzonings of the 1970s and 1980s, and so people of reasonable means can’t afford to live by themselves. This goes for entry-level software engineers as much as it goes for construction contractors. 2017 was the first year since 1974 that an apartment building opened in Menlo Park.

    Our downtown would be so much more interesting if it were full of apartments over retail instead of furniture stores – and it would address that “overcrowding”, too.

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