Food For Survival

Vinh Dao learned resilience when stranded in russia after the collapse of the soviet union. The CEO of Golden Gates trade and service used that strength to ensure his hundreds of restaurants survived during the pandemic and his plans to expand were kept on track.

- Wendy Kay

Vinh Dao is used to finding solutions when forced into tough situations. From being stranded as a young man in Russia with no job, nor money, to watching helplessly as COVID-19 forced the closure of hundreds of his restaurants, Vinh never loses sight of the bigger picture. In fact, it’s his dogged resilience that explains why his plans to open another 40 restaurants in 2020 are still very much on track.

It’s a big call, particularly when the CEO of Golden Gate Trade and Service, Vietnam’s leading restaurant chain operator, encountered more than a few hurdles when all 360 restaurants were shut down overnight to comply with the government’s lockdown laws. “We were ordered to close on 9 March,” Vinh recalls. “Of course, it was very difficult at the time. But we reopened at the end of April and quickly recovered about 90 per cent of business, only to be hit by COVID-19’s second wave in July. Although we weren’t closed down, business dropped to about 70 per cent. But that wasn’t too bad.”

The full impact of COVID-19 on Golden Gate was lessened by the fact that 70 per cent of its 16,000 nationwide restaurant staff were part-time students. With worried parents calling their children back home at the start of lockdown, the remaining 30 per cent of permanent staff were able to be kept on. “Our students were happy to go too, because many of them work for the tips and not the salaries,” Vinh explains. “When we reopened, they came back.”