A young woman's brief plea to TikTok about her parents' empty Vietnamese restaurant in Santa Rosa was apparently immediately successful, and business is back up.
Jennifer Le posted the seven-second video of her father leaning on a counter in the completely empty restaurant, Lee's Noodle House, staring at the door on January 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," Le wrote on the video caption.
She added, "TikTok do your thing and help support my parents' restaurant... my parents haven't been having that many customers & been feeling stressed dealing with financial issues." She then gave the restaurant's address at 1010 Hopper Avenue in Santa Rosa.
@jennif3rle tiktok do your thing & help support my parents Vietnamese restaurant:( 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:) 1010 Hopper Avenue, Santa Rosa, CA 95403 #fyp #vietnamesefood #restaurant ♬ The videos under this audio breaks my heart - •.༺♡༻.•
The video has gotten nearly 1 million views and over 130,000 likes to date, and garnered thousands of comments.
As the Press Democrat reports, Le posted the video while home from school — she's studying for a master's degree at Long Beach State. And it only took a matter of days for new customers to start coming in to Lee's Noodle House.
"First I posted it just to help my parents because when I was there helping them, it was really empty and quiet and we were just sitting around the majority of the time,” Le tells the Press Democrat. “I thought ‘I’ll give TikTok a chance.’ I know a lot of kids used TikTok.”
Le's mom, Ha Tran, is head chef of the 20-year-old restaurant, and her dad Vuong Le both cooks and serves food. Le tells the paper that she also worked there all through high school.
"She surprised me a lot … I didn’t know she did that,” Vuong Le tells the Press Democrat. "But it’s a fact. How come at nighttime nobody dines in? It’s so stressful. We usually close at 9, now we close at 7:30 because you can’t afford to pay PG&E gas and electric and all that and you cannot wait for customers."
ABC 7 also picked up the story, and Vuong Le tells them the video has made a "big difference," and "A lot of people from the community come out and support us and I'm really thankful."