{"id":5256,"date":"2018-11-22T03:17:02","date_gmt":"2018-11-22T03:17:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/eatatbento.com\/?p=5256"},"modified":"2023-04-17T18:23:47","modified_gmt":"2023-04-17T18:23:47","slug":"2-brothers-grew-pan-asian-restaurant-concept-single-location-florida-dynasty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eatatbento.com\/2018\/11\/2-brothers-grew-pan-asian-restaurant-concept-single-location-florida-dynasty\/","title":{"rendered":"How these 2 brothers grew their pan Asian restaurant concept from a single location to a Florida dynasty"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bizjournals.com\/orlando\/news\/2018\/10\/16\/how-these-2-brothers-grew-their-pan-asian.html\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.bizjournals.com\/orlando\/news\/2018\/10\/16\/how-these-2-brothers-grew-their-pan-asian.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Read full article on bizjournals.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>By <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bizjournals.com\/orlando\/bio\/4951\/Anjali+Fluker\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.bizjournals.com\/orlando\/bio\/4951\/Anjali+Fluker\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Anjali Fluker<\/a> \u2013 Associate Managing Editor, Orlando Business Journal<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2002, two young brothers decided to take on the task of bridging the gap between the traditional Asian dining experience and the first-generation Asian-American palate with the opening of Bento Asian Kitchen + Sushi near the University of Florida in Gainesville.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fast forward to today, and Johnny and Jimmy Tung \u2014 along with partner David Yu \u2014 have expanded that concept throughout the Sunshine State, including three in Orlando. The chain earlier this month opened a 2,700-square-foot Bento Asian Kitchen + Sushi restaurant in downtown St. Petersburg, its 10th in Florida. The Tungs also operate Sticky Rice Lao Street Food, Chela Tequila &amp; Tacos (formerly Kasa Restaurant &amp; Bar), Avenue Gastrobar, Mochi Frozen Yogurt \u2014 a concept they recently sold off \u2014 and Sushi Chao. Their Orlando-based Bento Management Group boasts a team of about 600 workers and reported $25.67 million in 2017 revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the brothers aren\u2019t done yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In fact, they\u2019re looking to open about 10 new restaurants each year, all corporate owned, younger brother Johnny Tung said. \u201cWe thought franchising would be harder to execute.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Locally, four more Bento cafes are in the works \u2014 in fast-growing areas like Lake Nona, Winter Park, Kissimmee and near downtown Orlando \u2014 as well as some other concepts.<br>\u201cAs of now, we are on track to double our locations by next year,\u201d Johnny Tung said. \u201cAlso, a lot of our team members started as part-time employees when they were students in college. They stuck with the company and a lot of them are in their 30s now. They started as bussers, cooks and dishwashers \u2014 now they\u2019re working for our corporate team.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meanwhile, here\u2019s what the chain has planned for Central Florida:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>A 3,000-square-foot, 100-seat Bento restaurant in the planned Tyson\u2019s Corner shopping center in southeast Orlando, across the street from Lake Nona High School. That likely will open sometime in 2019.<\/li><li>A 2,400-square-foot, 60-seat Bento in the $750 million Margaritaville Resort Orlando on U.S. Highway 192 and State Road 429. The Sunset Walk at Margaritaville retail piece of the resort will feature 200,000 square feet of shops, restaurants and entertainment, including tenants such as Studio Movie Grill, GameTime, Rascal Flatts restaurant, Rock &amp; Brews and more.<\/li><li>A 3,000-square-foot, 100-seat Bento opening soon in the Center of Winter Park shopping center on the southwest corner of Lee Road and Orlando Avenue. The center, which for three years was anchored by a shuttered Kmart store, in 2017 began adding several new tenants, such as a Marshalls\/HomeGoods combo store, Ross Dress for Less, DSW Designer Shoe Warehouse, Five Below, Blaze Pizza and Zo\u00ebs Kitchen, among others.<\/li><li>A 3,500-square-foot, 120- to 130-seat flagship Bento restaurant on Colonial Drive in downtown\u2019s Mills 50 District. The restaurant company will open a 10,000-square-foot headquarters building that also will feature Bento Management Group\u2019s corporate office, catering and test kitchen. \u201cIt used to be where all the stores did their own payroll, billing, marketing; now, we put it all under one roof,\u201d Johnny Tung said. \u201cWe\u2019ll have more of a dedicated, in-house marketing team and in-house HR. We\u2019ll even have opening teams for new stores. We will be able to grow a lot easier.\u201d<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>Additionally, the Tungs and Yu also are investors in Domu, a concept in Audubon Park\u2019s East End Market and in Jacksonville in partnership with one of the former Bento chefs, Sean Nguyen. The plan is to create a new parent company, Domu Dynasty, and then expand that concept to Dr. Phillips Marketplace next summer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Under that same parent, quick-casual ramen noodle concept Domu Chibi Ramen is scheduled to open later this year in the Waterford Lakes Town Center next to Fresh Kitchen \u2014 in the former Beef Jerky Outlet space \u2014 plus, a separate Japanese Izakaya pub\/yakitori concept dubbed Tori Tori is being envisioned for Mills Avenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThis is the most growth we\u2019ve had in the history of our company,\u201d Johnny Tung said. \u201cWe\u2019ll be doing restaurants in Florida for the next year or two. But after that, we want to target locations outside Florida; first Atlanta, and then further in the Southeast.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bento Management Group \u2014 an \u201cUltimate Newcomer\u201d on Orlando Business Journal\u2019s 2018 Golden 100 list of Central Florida\u2019s top privately-held firms \u2014 came in at No. 66 as a first-timer on this list.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Here\u2019s more from Tung on the firm:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What about your company makes you most proud? Our long-tenured managers \u2014 a core group of them have been with us for more than 10 years. Because they believed in our vision, they stayed with us and grew with the business. Now, with many of them in their 30s, they\u2019ve moved up the ranks to manager roles, and I couldn\u2019t be prouder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Describe your typical workday: When it comes to restaurant ownership, the term \u201ctypical\u201d goes out the window. However, most days, I spend my time meeting and corresponding with my top managers in various divisions, including culinary, operations and HR. I\u2019m continuously working to refine the processes for every faction of the company. There isn\u2019t a clear start or end of my work day. Rather, you have to be working on the business constantly in order to be successful in this industry. You have to live it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What does success look like for you? Being able to take care of people, whether it\u2019s family members or my employees \u2014 many of whom become like family. I\u2019m also aware of the rare opportunity we have to be directly responsible for the growth and development of the business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When did you consider yourself a success? When I was able to expand Bento outside of a college town. When we opened the first Bento in Gainesville near the University of Florida in 2002, it was an area we were very familiar with, since it was one we had grown up in. When we made the move to Orlando in 2008, it was out of our comfort zone. We were able not only to succeed here, but also to expand out to other areas, such as Jacksonville, South Florida, Tallahassee and Kissimmee. That showed us we can grow to new areas and remain successful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>How do you push through the worst times? Don\u2019t dwell on the past; you have to keep moving forward. When my father passed away, it was a very difficult time for all of us because he was the true patriarch of our family. It felt like a huge loss of leadership, but we kept moving forward, especially since we knew that\u2019s what he would want us to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What is your greatest leadership blindspot? Spreading myself too thin and wanting to be involved in everything<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What is your greatest leadership skill? My ability to identify people\u2019s strengths, and then determine what position they will enjoy and be most successful in. I\u2019ve had situations where an employee isn\u2019t performing as well as they could, and I have been able to move them to a role where they can succeed. Being able to develop people from entry level to management roles also is a skill \u2014 and something I truly enjoy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What is your favorite stress reducer? Spending time with my fianc\u00e9. We are getting married this year, which also happened to be the busiest year for Bento to date. Luckily, she helps me find balance, and is incredibly supportive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What song describes your work ethic? \u201cWork\u201d by Rihanna<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The trouble with having it all is \u2026 You risk becoming complacent. The trick is to find a balance between being happy with what you are producing without losing your inner drive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What key factors help your company attract and retain top talent? Our company culture plays a big role. Although we are not a small mom-and-pop shop, our company also hasn\u2019t gotten so large that employees don\u2019t feel recognized or heard. The speed with which we have grown also is very attractive, as people like to be a part of a growing company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Biggest mistake you\u2019ve seen a business leader recover from: When people start to move away from what is considered their bread and butter, and focus on something else. It has happened to us \u2014 sometimes when we start developing a new restaurant concept, we lose focus on Bento and certain aspects of that brand start to suffer. The good thing is, you always can recover. When that happens, and we make Bento our top priority again, everything rebounds rather quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Market strategy: When choosing a new location, we look at three major components:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>High daytime population, so we can serve a professional crowd at lunch time<\/li><li>Population density<\/li><li>Proximity to a college or university, since all our best performing locations are near universities.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<p>If we have all three, it\u2019s the ultimate fit for Bento. Even when we have just two, we can make it work successfully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Key accomplishments in the past 12 months: This has been our biggest year to date. We started with the celebration of our 15th anniversary. Then, we set out to open five new locations. In the past, we only opened as many as two new locations in a given year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Biggest challenges in the past 12 months: Due to our rapid expansion, we\u2019ve really started focusing on building a strong corporate team. It\u2019s been a challenge training everyone not to think of just managing one location, but instead, to think of managing the brand and focusing on all locations. Additionally, we are planning to open six new locations all within the next six months.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Future plans: Our goal is to start opening 10 new restaurants each year. To accomplish that, we have started looking at new locations outside of Florida \u2014 including Atlanta and the rest of the Southeast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Most impressive business statistic: Our original location (West Newberry Road in Gainesville) is still growing, even after 16 years. It\u2019s the same space, the same size kitchen and even the same amount of seats in the dining room, but year after year, there is growth in the numbers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Read full article on bizjournals.com By Anjali Fluker \u2013 Associate Managing Editor, Orlando Business Journal&#8230;","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7668,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5256","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eatatbento.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5256"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eatatbento.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eatatbento.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eatatbento.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eatatbento.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5256"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/eatatbento.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5256\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eatatbento.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eatatbento.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5256"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eatatbento.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5256"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eatatbento.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5256"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}