Can I save the family restaurant?
The Food Chain
BBC
4.7 • 545 Ratings
🗓️ 3 June 2026
⏱️ 27 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Running a restaurant is hard. Long hours, tight margins and constant stress. In this week's programme Rumella Dasgupta travels to Edinburgh, Scotland, to meet Lisa He and her mum Sophie. Lisa has just put her life and acting career on hold, to try and help her mum save the family's restaurant, the China Star. A video she made documenting her attempt has gone viral, with more than fifteen million views.
But is a viral video going to be enough to turn a failing business into a success? Lisa's got to fix the sprawling menu, digitise the paper ordering system and cut costs.
Lisa and Rumella meet restaurant turnaround expert David Hopkins from the Fifteen Group in Canada, who's on hand to give advice and to explain why restaurants are such difficult businesses to run.
Meanwhile the Mand family in Sydney Australia know only too well what Lisa and Sophie are going through. Last year, son Bhav documented his fight to save his dad's failing restaurant. So how's it doing now?
And, in such a difficult industry, when is the right time to walk away? Rumella hears from Carleigh Bond, who made the tough decision to close her vegan fast-food restaurant Forked Up in October 2025.
Producers: Lexy O'Connor and Beatrice Pickup.
Sound Engineer: Andrew Mills
Image description: Lisa He and mum Sophie in their restaurant, The China Star. Lisa is looking at mum and smiling. (Credit: BBC)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:07.2 | Things just swirling around my head. |
| 0:09.6 | Am I really the product of this? |
| 0:12.1 | Astonishing secrets uncovered by at-home DNA tests. |
| 0:17.0 | Little did I know what more was to come. |
| 0:19.5 | I'm Jenny Clemen, and in the new series of The Gift, we'll hear more stories emerging out of the ever-expanding global DNA database. They did know that I was different. You had kids together. Yeah. Then you met. Then we met. The gift. Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:42.2 | Take one failing family restaurant and one very determined daughter. |
| 0:48.1 | My mom's Chinese restaurant is dying and I have three months to save it. |
| 0:53.8 | I'm Ramella Dasgupta and you're listening to the food chain from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:59.2 | Today we're following the story of Lisa and her mum's Sophie. |
| 1:03.0 | Lisa's put her acting career on hold to try and rescue her mum's 30-year-old restaurant in Edinburgh. |
| 1:10.0 | A video Lisa posted about her attempts to turn the |
| 1:13.1 | business around has been viewed more than 15 million times, but can she turn clicks into paying |
| 1:20.2 | customers? We have no customers coming in and our menu is outdated with over 200 dishes. |
| 1:27.8 | We'll also hear from a father and son team in Australia |
| 1:31.0 | who know exactly what Lisa and Sophie are going through. |
| 1:35.3 | So they had a lot of debts that they were slowly building up, |
| 1:38.3 | but they weren't making enough money to get approved for a loan. |
| 1:41.2 | It felt like we were at rock bottom. |
| 1:43.3 | And we'll find out what makes |
| 1:45.1 | owner-operated restaurants such difficult businesses to run. Hi, are you ready to order? |
| 1:52.0 | I'm here in the Scottish city of Edinburgh on a sunny day at Sophie Lee's restaurant, the China Star, |
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