International restaurateurs make Taiwan home

Despite facing difficulties such as language barriers, high staff turnover, problems with landlords and importing ingredients, many foreign restauranteurs enjoy great success in Taiwan

By Douglas Habecker


Simon Habran from La Bodega
Photo by Douglas Habecker

They came to Taiwan from every corner of the world for a variety of reasons and ended up staying to open their own restaurants. Some were highly trained, experienced culinary experts when they got here while others had absolutely no professional kitchen experience.  Their businesses range from fine dining to the simplest of handheld light meals. While some have already expanded to become nationally recognised brands, chains and franchises, others are happy to maintain a single establishment or two.

Regardless of their similarities or differences they might have, these foreign restaurateurs are arguably Taiwan’s most visible international entrepreneurs, coming into daily close contact with everyday people, employing hundreds of Taiwanese and enriching the nation’s dining scene with a hearty helping of fresh flavors and perspectives seasoned with a pinch of passion and international inspiration. Success for non-Taiwanese owners is by no means a foregone conclusion with a broad range of unique challenges to overcome.  However, many have survived to enjoy a measure of longevity and stability in an ever-changing market.

Taichung: Microcosm of Taiwan’s foreign restaurant owners
Home to a large international community and relatively cosmopolitan population, Taichung has long hosted a significant number of foreign-owned restaurants, many drawn by a combination of these factors and other attributes, such as available space and lower costs.  This makes the city a good representation of this sector’s diversity.

New Zealander Dereke Bruce is generally acknowledged as the first among his peers when he opened a small business whose best-known offering was his homemade ice cream back in 1993. Just a couple years earlier, Bruce had been an executive sous chef at Shanghai Sheraton when he came on board as executive chef at Taipei’s Fortuna Hotel, where he served for a year before joining the Ploughman Group, overseeing that company’s many restaurants. That job led him to Taichung to open the group’s Pig & Whistle pub and restaurant. A year later, he had an epiphany late one night—while making instant popcorn and watching his pregnant Taiwanese wife dealing with a drunken customer disputing a bill—that it was time to strike out on his own. He opened Finga’s Ice Cream the same year his son Adam was born and followed up a year later with Finga’s Italian Restaurant and Finga’s Deli.

Finga's Dereke Bruce with wife Lily and son Adam
Photo by Douglas Habecker

At various times over the next 15 years, he would go on to open four different Finga’s restaurants, as well as other ventures at department stores and hotels. However, last year he shuttered his Finga’s Fine Foods restaurant and—partnered with Adam and other family members—consolidated at his central kitchen to focus on his deli shop and food supply business, providing a wide range of breads and pastries to hotels, restaurants, and other customers across Taiwan.

Probably the most publicly recognisable foreign restaurant owner in the city is Ugo Ortolano, whose image is often displayed prominently over his Pizza Rock branches. In December, 2011, the Quebec native and his Taiwanese wife launched their first Pizza Rock in Taichung and this month will open their 28^th branch in Kaohsiung. With no prior restaurant background, his main inspiration was growing up in an Italian family and enjoying food and friends at his grandmother and parent’s houses. To prepare for his new venture, he and his wife traveled to Italy and spent time examining everything from open kitchens to flour before returning to Taiwan to begin over a year of experimentation that resulted in a cross between “neo-Neapolitan” style pizza, about half-way between Roma and Neapolitan styles, and a current 23 topping options.

The Pizza Rock concept brought together his passions of cooking, rock music and inviting friends over and he came up with its bold black, white and yellow logo in 10 minutes. Although he says his expansion has never been rushed, he signed lease contracts for his third and fourth stores within 24 hours of each other and his fifth store in Changhua was his first franchise business. Today, he owns nine of his branches and the others are franchises, stretching between Kenting and Taipei.

Minesh Valand came to Taichung as a yoga instructor in 2009 and originally had no restaurant industry ambitions. However, he says that he found most local Indian restaurants were run by non-Indians and were serving items like beef, so he decided to open his first Chillies Indian Restaurant (later renamed Chilliesine) in 2015 to introduce both authentic cuisine “based on what I cook at home” and culture from his country. This was followed by a second Taichung branch two years later, a Jhubei branch in 2018 and two more Taichung branches in 2019, all ranging in size from about 60-plus to 240 seats and featuring striking décor that includes Indian wooden dining tables and chairs that he custom makes in India. One of his more recent achievements was making it onto the Michelin’s new Taichung list of recommended Bib Gourmand eateries.

BeMo’s is named after Canadian Ben Bartlett and his Taiwanese wife Monica. Ben was teaching English in Taichung and had no cooking or restaurant background but his entrepreneurial streak led him to launch this small eatery in 2012, focusing on what he felt was a niche for convenient, but healthy, food. Months of experimentation led him to open with a variety of wraps, stuffed with rice and a cornucopia of global flavors and ingredients, from Greek to Thai. Today, he offers six standard varieties and four premium wraps (the Acapulco wrap being a recent addition), plus quesadillas, nachos and salads. He says his goal has always been creating a franchise and he is taking a big step in that direction in the next couple months as he opens a second branch with a central kitchen.

Taiwanese-American LA native Daniel Yang came to Taiwan to work for a friend’s business. However, when his friends moved to China, he had no desire to leave Taiwan, which led him to open Just Diner in 2014, using his US experience working at a Japanese fusion restaurant. After successfully running his original modestly-sized restaurant on a small alley, he relocated just a couple months ago to a much larger, very high profile corner location selling a broad menu of American-style favorites. Located just behind Taichung’s Sogo Department Store, his new place cannot be missed, thanks to an enormous traditional American marquee-style sign that he had discuss with five different local sign companies before finding a maker.

Daniel Yang of Just Diner
Photo by Douglas Habecker

On another corner just a few stores down from Just Diner sits The Uptowner, which was also opened in 2014 by three foreign friends. Ben Tacheny had been working in the CNC manufacturing business in Taichung for an American firm for over three years. In an echo of Yang’s story, Tacheny’s company wanted to move him to China but he wasn’t interested and didn’t want to leave Taichung. He had previously worked as a cook at Uptowner restaurant branches in Minnesota and Chicago run by his friend and former boss, Kyle McCarty, who had visited Taiwan twice and loved it. Therefore, Tacheny went home for 10 months, drew up a business plan with McCarty to open an Uptowner in Taichung, and enlisted the partnership of Canadian friend Nick Alvarez, a chef consultant for The Landis Hotel Group and former executive sous chef of the group’s Hotel ONE in Taichung. After selling all-day American-style breakfasts, brunches and other dishes at their original location for five years, they had an “amicable breakup” with their landlord and moved Uptowner to its currently higher-visibility location in 2019.  Since then, Uptowner has been setting new records for business, even during the Covid-19 period, with August last year and 2020 respectively being its best-ever month and year for business.

Italian winemaker Valerio Franchi came to Taiwan six years ago and says its friendly people, beautiful scenery and corruption-free environment led him to set up a business importing Italian wines and other products. In part to help market his wines and supplement his income, he decided to open Bella Roma Italian restaurant in June, 2017.  Although he hadn’t run or worked in a restaurant before, he says that the skills were “in the blood”, as he had been cooking at his family’s home in Rome from the age of 17. In January, 2020, he relocated to his current location, where he has continued to expand his menu and food-and-wine promotions.

Another person whose affection for Taiwan eventually led to a more recent introduction to restaurant ownership is Belgian Simon Habran, who arrived here in his early 20s and decided to stay and open a Belgian waffle business, followed soon after by a Belgian beer distributorship. These two businesses brought him into contact with Laurent Rubio, the French owner of La Bodega, a popular Taichung Spanish bar and restaurant open since 2001. As a long-time customer and supplier of La Bodega, Habran says he saw its potential and discussions with Rubio led the Belgian to take full control on 1 January this year. Although he has lowered many of the prices, the menu remains mostly the same and he retains the kitchen skills of French chef Philippe Rouchet, himself the former owner of a local French restaurant.

Overcoming unique and common hurdles
Foreigners taking the plunge in Taiwan to open a restaurant often encounter a range of challenges that range from those common to owners the world over to some that are unique to the situation here, with language/communication barriers, high staff turnover, sourcing or importation of foreign ingredients, different local palates, and some government regulations and restrictions being more commonly cited difficulties.

Ortolano, who has about 100 direct employees, notes that language barriers are a frequent barrier for foreigners when it comes to everything from government documentation to management and communication with staff. “For a new foreigner opening a restaurant, language is the biggest headache by far for staff, suppliers, accountants, construction workers, training. My advice is even if your Chinese is okay, you have to become good at delegating and surrounding yourself with people who understand your message and carry it out for you…and recognizing who can be a good communicator for what area,” he says, adding that cultural and generational differences add further complexity to communication.

“Unless your Chinese is of a native Taiwanese level, you’re only going to be given reports and never going to have the whole picture, which can mean not being fully involved while having to make decisions. Instead, you’re given options. I’ve also seen foreigners try and open restaurants but because of language problems they’re never ever able to expand and end up doing everything themselves.”

Franchi says that language difficulties have been a big headache for him, particularly as he runs the business on his own without the help of a Taiwanese spouse or business partner. In particular, his efforts to handle paperwork with local city labor authorities have been a frustrating, time-consuming exercise, as he didn’t know who to talk to and was directed to many different people who were not able to speak English. Thus, it is no wonder he believes the government should create a specialized office or window to help foreign businesspeople like himself who, he points out, invest in Taiwan, employ Taiwanese and pay taxes.

Finding and keeping good employees, from wait staff to chefs, is a perennial and arguably the biggest challenge for owners. Tacheny says that he estimates that Uptowner has had over 100 employees in its history to date. However, he feels he’s been fortunate to find more stable core personnel for kitchen and day/night manager positions. Perhaps helping in this area, he says his attitude as a manager has also evolved and “chilled out” over the years. “Instead of saying, ‘Why can’t you do this perfectly?’, it’s more like, ‘I’m here to help you do your job better’ instead,” he says. “It can be intimidating for someone to work a restaurant where the boss is a foreigner. It should be a fun atmosphere. The key is just recognizing the best people and getting them to buy into the business.”

Allowing promising employees to literally buy into his business is Ortolano’s number-one strategy to keep staff, which now includes managers who have been with him for up to six years. Keeping their loyalty goes beyond salaries to making them shareholders with a stake in the business. He implemented this into his system three years ago and says it has solved many problems, keeping high-quality people who know that they will be rewarded if they work harder. Nevertheless, staffing remains his biggest challenge, a difficulty accentuated in recent years by the explosion of food delivery services: “We used to get a lot of resumes. However, now these people aren’t in a kitchen; they’re now working for Uber and FoodPanda. Half the people who would have worked in a kitchen are now on a scooter.” 

Currently employing about a dozen people and seeking more full-time workers, Bartlett agrees that finding the right people is essential. He believes that this has been a strength of BeMo’s, thanks to efforts to keep them happy, show appreciation and respect, and use the right management style. He adds that he has extended this mentality to building positive relationships with his local suppliers: “I treat them well and they treat me well.”

When he took over La Bodega in January, Habran said that finding staff to replace some departing employees was a long process that took him about a month, made more difficult because of the evening hours he needed workers for. In the end, he found his best option was hiring international university students, who are legally allowed to work parttime and seemed to be well-suited to working in his foreigner-heavy environment.

The Indian owner of Taichung’s Mr. India Restaurant says that his biggest challenge since taking over 18 months ago has been getting the right staff. Although he notes he is a “polite boss” that doesn’t shout at staff, he says turnover among Taiwanese wait staff can be high. “If they want to quit, they just quit and it’s not necessarily to move to a higher-paying job,” he notes, adding that communication differences can add to the challenge.  “Taiwanese won’t tell you what they’re thinking. They’re very sweet and won’t tell you why they’re leaving. In India, they’ll tell you if you ask them.”

By contrast, Finga’s Bruce says that he enjoyed a great, consistent staff during his first 10-15 years of business, although he acknowledges the past 5-6 years have been more difficult. One advantage he has had is the close involvement in the business of his wife Lily and her five sisters, which he refers to by number. For example, while Lily handles accounting, “No. 1” handles sales, “No. 5” is his baker and “No. 3” “knows everything and does everything”. Bruce also takes a slightly more positive view of his Taiwanese chefs who have left to start their own restaurants, adding that he even encourages it and promotes his former protégés’ businesses. He notes that low salaries push cooks to venture out on their own and he has been happy to keep in touch with over 20 former employees and students from his teaching days at Kaohsiung Hospitality College who now work elsewhere.

A related challenge is bringing foreign chefs into Taiwan. Although he currently employs 26 Indian chefs and other staff, Chilliesine’s Valand says that starting out was tough, as Taiwanese regulations initially only allowed him to bring in a single Indian chef. To bring in more, annual business has to exceed NT$10 million or registered capital needs to be at least NT$5 million. Mr. India’s owner echoes this observation, noting that under an initial NT$500,000 company registration he only was allowed a visa for a foreign manager and not a chef. He adds that the government also officially classifies foreign chefs as white-collar workers and requires higher commensurate salaries.