Back in 2020, we came up with the idea of making a traditional 90s-style Hong Kong cafe, known as Cha Chaan Teng (茶餐廳), into a modern but original, retro-fabulous type of restaurant and bar in New York, targeting the younger generation, to promote HK food culture. As a brand designer myself, Tenzin as an interior designer, we visualized every single element of the brand, color combination, name Mahjong Cafe, vibes, interiors, exteriors, business model, and marketing strategy. Basically, everything is inspired by the famous HK movie “In the Mood for Love.” 

 Until recently, Feb 2022, our so-called “friends”, also the current partners of Mahjong Cafe, Tony Lee, and Catherine Wong, reached out to us with significant interest in turning this idea into a reality. At that time, I had just given birth to my 2nd baby. Feb 5th. And started to work with them precisely 1 week after in labor. 

And this is where the tragedy started - we were beyond excited to make it happen, so we just immediately jumped on board with them to kick off the project without any official paperwork or partnership agreement signed. 

We trusted them so much to the level that the instinct of “signing all of the paperwork before starting” never kicks in. “Oh, there are so many mutual friends in between, they wouldn’t do this to us”, “yea, they shouldn’t, I trust them” was in our mind the whole time. Yup, we were that young and naive. With business going well, there was one part of my brain are telling me that I need to work on the paperwork and get them signed no matter what. 

Here comes the disgusting part — every time I mentioned about partnership agreement, Catherine use different excuses to make it delayed. It should’ve been a red flag for us. By the end of July, our accountant strongly advised us to create a new company, put lease under our names, make everything official. 

A little bit more of the background: no lease, no company, no bank account, and no paperwork is under our name when we started. Why? WE TRUST THEM! We let them handle these parts when we put 100% of our energy and time into what we are good at — design & marketing. 

And guess what? Yup, they DO NOT want to put anything under our names at all and planning to kick us out knowing that there is no official paperwork. 

By the end of July, when we need to pay rent, we had no choice but formed a new company under Mahjong Cafe INC. on July 28, to force them to join us in this company and transfer the lease before we can pay the rent with an actual record under every partner’s name. 

July 31, we sat down for partner meetings, when we, again, ask them again to sign the paperwork for the new company, they instead, diverted the conversation to the sales record, which indicates we are at a loss of 20% for the 1st month (completely normal for any new business ) and said “you guys operated it at loss, you have to cover 100% of the loss or you have to leave” 

We were shocked and speechless at that moment, sounds like everything is all planned. They knew that no one would accept the terms so it will be a “good” excuse to force us out.

 The most ridiculous thing is - that same night, right after we closed out, we took our staff to eat out, and came back and found out they secretly changed the locks and everything. SPEECHLESS. Everything is planned. 6 months of work in design, marketing, business operation, even in the kitchen to wash dishes, NO SINGLE PENNY paid. Nothing at all. They walked away free with every inch of our designs. 

Both Tenzin and I, can swear under the oath if anything here said is untrue, we are willing to take the legal consequences. 

Now what we can do? No paperwork was signed, no official record of us owing partnership, and we got kicked out from our own store which we created using our bare hands when we could have used that hand to hold our precious newborn Eiyu and Eisen. Our partners are still shamelessly using our branding and interior design and logo to make profits. 

A very sharp knife stabbed in the back when we probably are the ones who handed them the knife because we are too kind. 

Updates — we contacted trademark lawyers and started the trademark process. However, it takes at least 6 months to a year to finalize the work. During the wait time, we literally have nothing to do about the fact that they are still using our logo, interior designs, name, and branding. 

Here is a petition link (in my profile) to ask the landlord to cancel the lease with unethical people and ask the court to order them to take down the design before trademark registration finalizing.

At this moment, we do not care about any money or any partnership. We just want them to take down our branding, logo, and everything inch of our interior design and stop using it onwards. 

If your algorithms and everyone who is reading this can help us by signing the petition or spreading out the words or even just not supporting this unethical business, I am sure karma will do the work, and all of our hard work will be paid off.

Thank you for supporting Asian artists.