In June 2020 when Molly Tou opened a restaurant in a former Denny’s location in Fairfield, it was anyone’s guess if the venture would succeed.
“In late 2018, I saw this location that had been vacated, and I looked at it as a good real estate investment opportunity as well,” said Tou, who had run a restaurant once before after working for many years as a San Francisco-based residential real estate agent, a license she maintains.
Tou moved forward with buying the old Denny’s property. She tapped her savings, secured a $620,000 Small Business Administration loan and a $1.3 million loan from Travis Credit Union, she said. Construction started in October 2019.
But when the pandemic hit several months later, Tou was already in deep and decided to push forward with Two60 Kitchen + Bar, an establishment that serves New American cuisine — food that fuses flavors from around the world. Shanghai lumpia, pastas, steaks and chops are among the many choices on the menu.
Tou, 47, is the youngest of three daughters born to parents who immigrated from China, she said. Her mother grew up in Shanghai and her father in NanJing. The family immigrated to Taiwan when she was born and because her father was a merchant shipping captain, the family moved a few more times: to Singapore and Australia before settling in San Francisco when Tou was 8 years old, she said.
By the time she reached college age, Tou was working two part-time jobs in the real estate business. She went to City College of San Francisco at night, and when it came time to take her real estate license test, she passed on the first try.
“I really thought I was going to have to take the test two or three times,” she said with a laugh.
After working in real estate for about five years, Tou decided she wanted to do something other than sell houses, so she called her uncle, a 40-year restaurateur who at the time owned a restaurant in Vallejo. She asked if he'd like to partner with her. That was in 2006.
“What I had in mind was a quick, fast-casual type of restaurant, but it ended up that we found this wonderful space in Green Valley,” she said. Green Valley is suburban neighborhood in Fairfield. “It was a new building that was going up and they were looking for a full-service, more upscale restaurant.”
Tou relocated from San Francisco to Fairfield and, with her uncle, opened Sticky Rice Chinese Bistro and Bar. They ran the popular Chinese restaurant for nearly 12 years until he decided to retire in 2017.
After that, Tou said she didn’t expect to own a restaurant again. She was burned out from working long hours and also was raising her young son Matthew, now 12, with her husband, Michael.
But she ultimately changed her mind.
“I really missed the social aspect of owning a restaurant,” Tou said. “When you're in a neighborhood for 11 years, you make a lot of friends, and you have a lot of regular customers.”
Tou has indeed collected many supporters and friends along the way. Lisa Van Veren worked for Tou at Sticky Rice from 2007 to 2014 before moving out of state.
Today, she’s back, as general manager of Two60 Kitchen.
“I'm not the only one that came back. We probably have eight employees that had worked for her over the last 15 years that have come back,” Van Veren said, adding that even old Sticky Rice employees stop in to visit and eat. “I think if anyone else tried to open a restaurant in June of 2020, they wouldn't still be here.”
Van Veren said some of Two60 Kitchen’s biggest supporting customers are other neighborhood restaurant owners, who Tou supports as well.
One of Tou’s loyal customers throughout the years is Sonny Antonio, founder and CEO of Sunshine Design, a Fairfield-based full-service utility design and consulting firm. Antonio and his wife also became long-time friends.
He sees in Tou what it takes to be an entrepreneur.
“You want to make sure your customers are No. 1 and that you treat every customer as if it's your only customer and she does that,” he said. "She makes sure her team is the same way.”
Now more than two years after opening, Two60Kitchen is doing so well that Tou is in the process of expanding her restaurant.
“I always have this thought in my head that when you make a restaurant too big, it seems empty,” she said. “But then last year after Christmas, I realized that I needed a private banquet room and also a room for overflow dining, especially on the weekends.”
Tou’s second turn at owning a restaurant also comes with a bit of a different mindset.
“I've delegated a lot of the little operational details so I can focus on family and also growing my business,” she said, noting she managed Sticky Rice by herself, routinely working long hours. "Now, there are still days where I'm here 12 or 14 hours, but there are days (like over) Labor Day weekend, when I was able to go to my friend's wedding in Mount Shasta.”
Cheryl Sarfaty covers tourism, hospitality, health care and employment. She previously worked for a Gannett daily newspaper in New Jersey and NJBIZ, the state’s business journal. Cheryl has freelanced for business journals in Sacramento, Silicon Valley, San Francisco and Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from California State University, Northridge. Reach her at cheryl.sarfaty@busjrnl.com or 707-521-4259.
