Diversity At Work: Asian-Americans

Nation's Restaurant News, May 24, 1999 by Gregg Cebrzynski

Two words of advice to restaurant owners who hire Asian-Americans: Be patient. It takes a while for members of those ethnic groups, especially first-generation immigrants, to assimilate into American society, and it takes time for restaurateurs to understand the cultural traditions that guide their work lives.

And though Asian-Americans are tireless workers, they have an entrepreneurial spirit, a desire to own their own businesses, which in some cases can pose a problem in retaining them for long.

That said, they are still a sought-after work force because of their determination to perform at the peak of their abilities.

"I want more, but many of them are in business for themselves," says Leeann Chin, founder and board chairman of Minneapolis-based Leeann Chin Inc. "And there's not a big Asian population in Minnesota."

The company operates three buffet restaurants and 45 takeout units as Leeann Chinese Cuisine. The chain has 1,500 employees, 10 percent of them Asian-Americans. It recently opened a restaurant in Detroit, and a sign in the window announcing the opening was enough to attract potential Asian-American employees.

"They saw the sign, and they saw the Chinese and they can relate to that," Chin explains. "So they just want to come in and work."

Although Asian-Americans, the smallest percentage of minorities in the United States, accounted for only 3.3 percent of the general population in 1992, that figure is projected to grow to 6 percent in 2010. Similarly, Asian-Americans are growing as a percentage of the foodservice-industry work force as well. They made up 4.5 percent of the work force in 1994 and are projected to hold 5.5 percent of the jobs in 2000 and 6.3 percent in 2005, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics.

Chin says Asian-Americans are good workers, but she qualifies that observation.

"They work hard. They can inspire other people and themselves," she says. "The first thing is, they have to like the job. The trouble is when they're new in the country, and they really hate it. That's when it's hard to be a good employee."

They also have difficulty in learning the structure of American restaurant operations and the regulations governing cleanliness, which are different from the standards for restaurants in Asia.

Language is a problem but not an insurmountable one, according to Peggy Cherng, president and chief executive of Panda Management Co., Pasadena, Calif., which operates the 300unit Panda Express chain of gourmet Chinese restaurants.

The company has about 3,700 employees, half of them Asian-Americans. Many are recruited through ads in Chinese-language newspapers, but the most common way to hire workers is through referrals by current employees.

For new immigrants, learning English can be difficult, Cherng says. Panda helps kitchen personnel through a course in English as a second language and hopes to find learning institutions that will provide English classes for other employees.

Cherng says that "we're not as active as I'd like to see" in persuading employees to attend English classes, but a hurdle in that area must be overcome: Employees work long days, coming in at 10 a.m. and staying "pretty late," Cherng says, which rules out night classes. And on their days off they want free time, not class time.

Cherng also finds that retaining Asian-Americans is a challenge because of their desire to own their own businesses rather than work for someone else. Asian Americans have the highest rate of business ownership among minority groups and are 1.5 times more likely to be self-employed than other groups, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

To keep employees, Panda makes it clear that it's a growing company with a lot of opportunity to advance, based on its policy of promoting from within, Cherng says. The company provides managerial training and a "character enhancement program" in which employees learn how to improve their interpersonal skills and communicate more effectively.

That's especially important when it comes to the Chinese, who "tend not to be as open" as Americans, Cherng said.

"They don't express their dislikes," she explains. "Chinese are not assertive. They are very reserved."

Overcoming language barriers takes a different twist for Jeffrey Yarbrough, founder of Liberty, a popular pan-Asian noodle restaurant in Dallas, whose Asian-American staff is predominantly Thai.

"Sometimes it's easier to communicate in Spanish than in Thai or English," Yarbrough explains. "In Texas there's a large Latin-American population, and they teach Thai people Spanish. It's very difficult for Americans to learn Thai."

The language problem shows up sometimes in subtle ways. Yarbrough says that an Asian-American friend of his told him that when a Thai says "yes" in response to a question, that can mean only that he heard you, not that he agrees to do what he's asked.

Yet in some situations English is not the preferred language.

"The biggest problem is to develop a program for Thais to learn the health code in their own language," Yarbrough says. Trying to understand the jargon of a municipal code is extremely difficult for Thais, he explains.