Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, March 13, 1994 TAG: 9403090206
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: D-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By Megan Schnabel STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
She was a minority, she had no money and no family in the area. You just aren't supposed to try getting into business with three strikes like that, she says now.
But the woman behind Roanoke's Asian-French Cafe made it despite all those odds. Almost 15 years after Allen came to Virginia as a political refugee from Vietnam, her restaurant is a fixture in downtown Roanoke's City Market.
Now, Allen the established businesswoman counsels minority groups about their business opportunities. At colleges and at business conferences, she tells them her story; she shows them that they do have a chance, that their minority status is no reason to concede defeat.
Starting a small business is tough for anyone, Allen said. But if would-be minority entrepreneurs just assume they will fail because of their status, then they really will have trouble, she said.
"If you come here and you have a complex - `I can't do it, people don't like me' - that attitude will stop you," she said.
Allen attributes her success - and the lack of resistance she met as a minority business owner - to her hard work and perseverance during the early days of the restaurant.
"I don't think discrimination is that big a deal," she said. "When people see you're working hard, they help you. You face a mirror. If you smile, they smile back to you."
Make no mistake, though: Getting to this point was no smooth journey. When the business was still young, before it had expanded beyond its one original market stall, Allen worked 16-hour days because she couldn't afford to hire anyone to help. Her hectic schedule once landed her in the hospital after she collapsed on the job. And then, during the 1985 flood, she watched everything she had worked for wash away.
But business was good; word of her restaurant spread. After several years, she was able to tell immigration officials that the Asian-French Cafe needed workers. That opened the way for her adult children - who weren't allowed to immigrate until there were jobs waiting for them - to come to the United States.
"I did very well," said Allen, sitting at a window table in the restaurant.
Although Allen, 52, turned the business over to son Steve Nguyen last summer, she hasn't left it entirely. She received her real estate license in mid-February, but she wants to keep her schedule flexible so she can continue to help Nguyen.
She hopes her son will be able to do even better than she did, now that the debts are paid and the restaurant is established.
"All the hard time is over now," she said. "No matter how much rain and storm, one day there will be sunshine."
by CNB