Inside a Toronto Chinese Family Restaurant That Almost Closed

THE GREAT FOUNTAIN FAST FOOD RESTAURANT

I hated it so much that I just couldn’t stand working beside my mom. Customers are in your face demanding things all the time. When you go home, all your clothes will smell like oil.

The store opens at 11. My parents roll in around 9. I think one of our staff members roll in at around 8:30. And then that’s just to get all the prep work started. So, make sure things are heated up, equipment is turned on, vegetables being prepared, meats being prepared for the day, everything’s fresh. You basically have
to have everything out. All the ingredients, all the tea has to be already brewed and or is in the process of brewing. Having everything ready in their spot so that when you need it, it’s there. We’re able to really get fired up and going. So no matter how busy it is, our staff can handle it. 11:45 is when the lunch rush starts usually and that’s when like students are starting to come in. So students usually come from next door which is a collegiate Institute. So those are our
favorite high school students cuz they get like an Asian court collegiate institute discount.

I think cooking is the obvious part. The not so obvious part is the logistics. There’s just so much that goes on behind the scenes that nobody ever thinks about. Like obviously restaurant, yes, you’re cooking and then a piece of machinery breaks down or starts malfunctioning mid shift. Who’s going to fix it? Fridges, freezers always break down during the summer. It’s
almost like a 100% guaranteed. Also things like just staying way late into the night just to prepare for the next day. you’re really, you know, leaving at 11:00 p.m. when your advertised close time is 9:00 and then you’re coming into work way before actual opening hours just to prepare. So these things people don’t see behind the scenes, get a glimpse of what the actual real life is. It’s crazy.

Historically, this neighborhood was an immigrant hub for Chinese people. This is just basically where a lot of immigrants set up their lives and set up shops. So, the original owners of the stall were from Hong Kong. And then in 2015, that’s when my parents bought Great Fountain Fast Food and we’ve been operating ever since. My parents were not part of the restaurant industry at all. They were working in a factory, like a garment factory um in Scarborough. There was a point in my life where I just never saw my parents at all. And it was because they were working to basically get an income for the family. Around 2008 is when a lot of the garment work moved elsewhere for economic reasons. So my parents were laid off from their jobs and that was a turning point for them.

My dad thought it would be more stable to be your own boss rather than to be someone else’s employee. Basically, their initial restaurant was fish and chips in Pickering and it was called Blue Ocean Fish and Chips. It was a whole different lifestyle. Through a mutual
connection, we learned that Great Fountain was on sale. They didn’t think a lot about it. They just bought it. And then the next day, bam, they’re here. And that’s it. That’s the That’s the whole story of how we got here.

I hated it so much that I just couldn’t stand working beside my mom. A, and then B, hated this kind of work as well. It’s so stressful. Customers are in your face demanding things all the time. When you go home, all your clothes would smell like oil. It would smell like the restaurant and you just reminded of all like the bad times you had. I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do after school. I studied design and that’s basically my uh background and what I like doing. In my head I was like okay I’ll either work in designs or I joined the family business because it was co 19.

So that was the month that lockdown started was the month I joined business is basically the primary income for our family. Lockdowns and co basically brought our business to a halt. I was just like, “Okay, if we want to survive this, something needs to change. If we were to grow on social media at this point in time, we could make it happen. Like, we could go through the other side.

On top of that, there was this side of me that also felt like I had to give back to my parents because I I realized all the, you know, the sacrifices that they had to make while raising me, my brother. It was just like this this moment where I just realized, dang, like my parents worked a lot. There was a part of me that wanted to give back to my parents just to say, you know, thank you. Like a moment of gratitude really. So when you pair all these things up, that’s that’s basically why I got into this business and why I’m extremely involved till today.

I studied in school, did all the academic stuff, [music] and then for my parents, hardcore immigrants, they did all the manual labor. They came from almost rural China, I would say. And you know when you’re from that part of the country this the rules of life are different. The way you’re coded in your mind and in your body and in your actions is so different from the way I was brought up. You have this and you have this. For me to come into the business where everybody else is like this. I was just the strange one to them. I had to learn to adapt to their values, their way of conduct, their behaviors. It was just so much for me to learn.

One of our most popular items is the garlic fried chicken on fried rice. We use one really big chicken legs. Chicken leg has to weigh at least one lb. So it ends up being like this big. And if we get any chicken legs that are like this big, it’s not going to cut. It has to be a size and weight minimum. We deep fry this. Uh we make our sauce inhouse. It comes on top of fried rice. just the perfect comfort meal for a lot of our customers.

So, my mom takes a lot of pride in making her Hong Kong style tea. The onemthing that my mom will never compromise on is the tea leaves. So, sometimes you have different teas that do different things. So, one could be for color, one could be for taste, one could be for just to round things off and just to give like fragrance to the tea. So you blend all these three different teas, four different tees together and it gives a different result for your tea. So the reason why a lot of people, a lot of our old customers like to come back is because they really like our tea that my mom makes. So for that reason, my mom never wants to change the recipe of the tea.

Yes, there is that option. Like you could say like, “Okay, I’m I’m throwing a towel and I don’t want to do this anymore.”Which probably has come across my parents’ mind, but they don’t talk about it. They don’t bring it up like that. For them, it’s just like, “No, you have to. Like, it’s a commitment. Like, you can’t just stop because like of this little thing. You like you got to keep going.” Yeah. They’re just really kind of like machines. Right now in 2026, the reason we keep going is really just for the community. Like we said earlier, it’s more than just the food. It’s more than just the money. It’s preserving the culture. It’s, you know, keeping the Chinese Canadian identity thriving. It’s being able to give pride to the food that we serve. When you add it all together, it just feels like we’re part of this bigger movement that’s happening that’s more than just our restaurant.

Success right now, for me, it means when people bring up Great Fountain, they talk about their own immigrant root stories with genuine emotion. When a lot of new customers come to Great Fountain, they tend to bring up similar stories of like, oh, their parents used to own a restaurant or hardships while [music] growing up in this uh new part of the world. When people come to Great Fountain and share these stories with me, like that’s how I know we’re doing the right thing. The beef with rice noodle, a dish with rice noodle. So, it’s like the flat wide noodle. It’s very flexible and bouncy. It comes with bean sprouts, onions, spring onions, and then slices of beef. So, this dish is stir-fried on the walk. And the thing that uh most customers look for in this dish is like the smell, the charcoal aroma of the walk.

If anyone actually read this, i apologize, this was a transcript from the video. i will edit and repost a proper letter/article.