A Burnaby restaurant beloved by area residents – but hit hard by COVID-19-related business impacts – is set to be reborn.
Chef Hung, a Taiwanese noodle giant, has operated for several years in the UniverCity development on Burnaby Mountain. But it has been “temporarily closed” for several months as COVID-19 devastated much of its client base. (Chef Hung also saw the permanent closure of one of its restaurants in West Vancouver after 10 years in the community.)
Many UniverCity restaurants rely heavily on the SFU students who live in the neighbourhood while going to school – including a large population from various countries in Asia.
But COVID-19 closed the SFU Burnaby campus as the school moved online, meaning a large chunk of those students have disappeared for much of the past 18 months.
Now, with SFU reopening, many of the students have returned to UniverCity and the streets are more alive with students.
That means a rebirth for Chef Hung, which has posted signs saying a “grand opening” is coming on Aug. 25.
Chef Hung has also opened a second restaurant in Burnaby with an express location at the Amazing Brentwood shopping centre’s food court, known as Tables.
The reopening comes at a time when business is starting to pick up in various sectors as people begin to loosen up their wallets.
Retail sales rose 4.2 per cent to $56.2 billion in June as public health restrictions were eased in many parts of the country, Statistics Canada said Friday.
However, the agency said its preliminary estimate for July, which will be revised, suggests retail sales fell 1.7 per cent last month.
TD Bank economist Ksenia Bushmeneva said retail sales continue to ebb and flow with the tightening and easing of the public health restrictions.
"While consumers have been enjoying their newly found access to stores, they have also started shifting their spending patterns away from goods and toward services such as dining out, recreation and travel," Bushmeneva wrote in a report.
"This transition likely weighed on retail sales in July, as indicated by the decline in the advance estimate. That said, improvement in spending on high-touch services, in addition to robust retail expenditure, bodes well for GDP growth in the third quarter."
For June, retail sales increased in eight of the 11 subsectors as clothing and clothing accessories stores led the way with a gain of 49.1 per cent following two months of declines.
Sales at general merchandise stores rose 7.4 per cent, while motor vehicle and parts dealers gained 2.7 per cent.
- With additional reporting by the Canadian Press
