Since opening in Morrisville’s MarketPlace shopping center in 2017, the Laotian and Thai street food restaurant Yin Dee has become a local favorite, with four and a half stars on Yelp and rave reviews across various platforms. But the small family business almost had to permanently close because of the COVID-19 shutdown until loyal locals rallied to save it.

Alyssa Graham’s family has been in the restaurant business for 15 years. They formerly owned Champa Thai & Sushi in Raleigh. Graham’s mother, Patti Saysombath, and grandmother, Sandy Svongsa, opened Yin Dee in April 2017.

“Nothing fancy—just good food,” Saysombath says. 

Not long after the opening, Syvongsa passed away. Now Saysombath owns Yin Dee and works there prepping, cooking, and cleaning alongside her sister, Bounnet Boutavong. 

The family’s restaurants have been a huge part of Graham’s life since she was a child.

“I’ve spent countless days doing homework in the office there,” she says. “My twenty-second birthday was [at Yin Dee] last year. We’ve done Friendsgiving there.”

Graham felt powerless as the summer slipped away and the restaurant bore the financial toll of the pandemic. One day in late July, her sister, Morgan Snellbaker, who works at Yin Dee, came home and said that their mother had told her and another employee that the restaurant might have to close.

Before the pandemic, Saysombath says, Yin Dee was thriving, but May and June brought an 80 percent drop in sales. They tried everything from reducing hours to offering preorders. Saysombath and her godsister, also a Yin Dee employee, have both gone without pay since March. They’ve had to dip into savings to keep the business afloat. A self-proclaimed optimist, Saysombath wanted to do whatever it took to keep the business going. But shutting down seemed an inevitable point on the horizon. 

Desperate, Graham decided to try something new. She took her Twitter off private, typed out everything that had been happening, and then pressed send. She also started a GoFundMe, unsure of what goal to set. It wasn’t easy—both Grahams and Saysombath felt reluctant to ask for help, especially when times are tough for the restaurant industry at large. Initially, Graham didn’t tell her mother about the fundraising efforts. 

When Saysombath found out about the GoFundMe, which has raised $2,870 of $3,500 to date, she was moved by the support. Regular customers commented that they would make a stop soon, people from other cities shared the post, and even people from other states contributed donations. 

“I cried. It makes me want to cry now,” she says. “I’m very gracious, very humbled. That will help with paying back all the credit card bills.”

In just a few days, Graham’s post was shared and liked thousands of times, and the outpouring of support was evident at Yin Dee.

“The parking lot was filled,” Graham says. “It had been dead for months because of COVID-19. We were very overwhelmed, in the best way.”

While the community support has helped, Yin Dee’s sales are still down 50 percent from what they were before the pandemic. Many of its customers were office workers who are working remotely during the pandemic. Saysombath, who says several employees have high-risk family members, has no plans yet for a full reopening. Instead, Yin Dee offers takeout or private dining, in which customers can rent the space and order from a set menu.

They also want to get outdoor dining going in the future, for which they remain hopeful.

“In the past two weeks, business has been good,” Saysombath says. “I hope it keeps up. As long as I can pay rent and hopefully get back on payroll, I’ll be happy.”

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