Surprising rise in California entrepreneurs daring to start new businesses during pandemic
Summary
The pandemic and stay-at-home orders have forced thousands of financially dried up California businesses to shut down, but for Dan Zhao, they became the reason to start a new one. But when his father, Keguang, lost his job as a cook in a Los Angeles Chinese chain restaurant in March, Zhao started to worry about him, alone and on unemployment. So, in October — amid rising coronavirus cases and a 9.3 percent unemployment rate — father and son opened their delivery-and-pick-up only restaurant in Oakland’s Fruitvale neighborhood. “For me, it’s about how to get past this hurdle of the pandemic with my family.” Despite a grim economy, applications for new business licenses are on the rise: In California, 442,324 were filed in 2020, a 21.7 percent increase from the year before, according to an analysis of data that the U.S. Census Bureau developed with economists and the federal reserve. Karim Mayfield, a former professional boxer turned businessman, had worked different jobs from reception to assistant manager at STIIIZY Mission Street, a San Francisco dispensary.