It's been a rough couple of months for local restaurants, including Sushiya in downtown Dallas.
Kang Lee has owned and worked at the Elm Street sushi restaurant for 18 years, and owned various other restaurants before that. At 80 years old, Lee was looking forward to retiring and caring for his wife, the Dallas Morning News reported.
Lee had to push back his retirement plans when the pandemic started and he lost most of his business. Nearby office workers no longer stopped by for lunch and take-out orders couldn't make up for the the lost revenue.
"Before the pandemic, there was regular business, and we were happy. Now, there's hardly any business," Lee told WFAA.
That is until his 18-year-old grandson Andrew Kim visited in March. Kim is active on social media and has more than 630,000 followers on TikTok alone.
He decided to make an upbeat 10-second TikTok video of the restaurant and asked his followers to support his grandad's place. "business has been slow with corona, so it would meal a lot if you came :)" Kim wrote.
The video took off with people leaving comments about how they'll stop by and take their friends. It even found its way to Facebook where it was shared on group pages encouraging people to support local Dallas businesses.
Now the video has been seen more than 6 million times, and it's the best advertisement Lee could have asked for.
“I couldn’t believe it. People were lined up at the door!” he told the Morning News.
The video also exceeded Kim's expectations.
"Grandpa called, and he told me it was crazy and that they were packed. It was so unexpected," Kim said.
Business at Sushiya is almost back to its pre-pandemic levels and Lee has had to rehire all of his previous employees just to keep up with demand.
Kim's video helped introduced younger diners to Sushiya, and Lee hopes they'll keep coming back until he retires.
Photo: Getty Images