A Thai-fusion restaurant in Bakersfield, California put up a sign explaining why they’ve closed for two weeks, and the heartwarming reason is breaking the internet — and making everyone want to eat there.
A Reddit user snapped and posted a picture of the sign at Chef’s Choice Noodle Bar, which went viral and has received more than 2,000 comments. Some local users said that they now want to eat at the restaurant more often.
The sign reads: “Our head chef is from Thailand, and every year, we send him back to visit his family. Prior to coming to work at Chef’s Choice Noodle Bar, he had not seen his family for 15 years, but when he joined the Noodle Bar family, we wanted him to have the opportunity to see his family on a more regular basis. So we close the restaurant for two weeks every fall, in order for him to visit his family and recharge himself.”
Chef Preeda Piamda, 56, reportedly moved to the U.S. in the 1990s to send money back to his wife and two children in Thailand. In 2011, when he started working for Chef’s Choice Noodle Bar, it had been an incredible 15 years since he’d seen them.
When the restaurant’s owners Nick and Pum Hansa hired him, they promised to close up their restaurant in the fall for two weeks and buy Preeda a plane ticket so he could see his family every year, reported the Daily Mail.
This year, Preeda took off for vacation on Sept. 19 and will be back to reopen the restaurant on Oct. 4.
The mandatory vacation policy has then been picked up my media all over the globe.
While the fall is their lowest-earning time of the year, the restaurant still loses up to US$50,000 by shutting down, but owner Nick Hansa said it is “worth it to show a commitment to his employees.”
