KinhDo restaurant owners struggling to stay open in Uptown Minneapolis

MINNEAPOLIS (FOX 9) - For more than 35 years, KinhDo restaurant has served Vietnamese and Chinese cuisine in Uptown. But owner Dathao Phan isn't sure how much longer they'll be able to keep the doors open.

"Honestly it's horrible," Phan said. "Everything is so overwhelming at this point. It's been a struggle for us."

Phan says the family-owned business has been struggling for the past two years because of the pandemic and the civil unrest after the death of George Floyd. She says the previous landlord let them pay what they could, but the building was sold in June of last year, and they haven't been able to pay their full rent for the last couple of months.

"Business has been slow. Takeout has been good, and we appreciate everybody who has ordered from us. But it doesn't pay the rent with the full rent we have to cover," Phan said.

Phan's parents opened the restaurant in the mid-1980s after moving to Minnesota from Vietnam and passed it down to Phan and her husband in 2015.

Now, her son has started GoFundMe campaign to raise $25,000 to pay back rent and help cover expenses for the next couple of months.

"My parents started this and gave it to us," she said. "Emotionally, it's kind of like ‘you failed.’"

Phan says they plan to start serving lunch to bring in more business and now that the omicron wave is subsiding. She believes customers will return to this once bustling neighborhood in the spring.

"We are just hoping to survive, so we can see when Uptown comes back to its glory days which hopefully will be soon," Phan said.