Employees struggling after Yaletown restaurant closes suddenly

The sudden closure of Yaletown’s Sea House restaurant has left some of its employees scrambling to make ends meet.

Sandeep Sharma, a former employee, says he’s mentally and financially upset about the closure, which has had serious impacts on his family.

“It’s a very expensive city altogether and you have to work a lot to get ahead, and all of a sudden you can’t work anymore, it’s very shocking for everyone,” he said.

Aylin Mousavi, former manager of the restaurant, says the closure was abrupt.

“It wasn’t really fair for the staff to not have a job in a second and not have any support or notice,” she said.

Mousavi says she worked at Sea House for four years, and the closure is hurting her and the other 30 employees

“A lot of them still haven’t found jobs, including me,” she said. “A lot of them were international students, immigrants. A few can’t speak English and I was able to speak to them in Farsi which is why they were comfortable working with us.”

CityNews reached out to the restaurant’s landlord, Concord Pacific. It says it ended the lease because the restaurant did not have a valid business licence and the owner repeatedly paid rent late. The closure comes after the two parties ended up in court. In a decision on Oct. 3, 2023, the judge said the restaurant was in “significant arrears” and has a “protracted history of avoiding payment of rent.”

“In my view, failure to have a business licence results in Sea House’s operation of their restaurant being unlawful,” the judgment says. “In my view, equitable relief cannot be obtained to facilitate unlawful activity.”

The restaurant’s owner, Arash Ranjbar, says he invested almost one million dollars into the business, and he didn’t know the proper steps to obtain a business licence with the City of Vancouver. He said the COVID-19 pandemic made it tough to stay afloat.

“Everything was postponed, everything was late, and everything was closed especially for the restaurant,” he said. “It was super difficult for me. I was a new immigrant, a newcomer to Canada, a new business owner and it was difficult to handle everything during COVID.”

The city confirmed Sea House doesn’t have a current business licence. It says it did issue a permit for Sea House to renovate in May 2021, but the work was never completed and the owner never scheduled an inspection. It says there’s an investigation open into how Sea House operated without a licence.

Dolly VanHoltum, a regular customer at the restaurant, says she ate there once a week.

“The service was excellent, the food was excellent and the pizza was out of this world,” she said. “It was a phenomenal restaurant and I miss it very, very much”

Concord Pacific says it has now leased the property to new tenants.

Despite the hurtful goodbye, some employees say they’ll miss the restaurant.

“I have wife, I have my two kids, and we recently migrated here. Everything was going good from there because it was a stable job,” Sharma said.

“It takes some time to find a new job with the similar environment because we have a very good bond so it was a big shock for me.”