Staff members prepare food at Junzi Kitchen in New York, the United States, Oct. 7, 2019. When Zhao Yong was pursuing his PhD in Yale University in the early 2010s, he was frustrated to learn that some local Chinese restaurants he frequented would no longer be there in the near future due to low profit margins and increasing labor costs. With a perpetual crave for the taste of home, Zhao Yong and six of his college mates from China saw a big opportunity through this looming crisis, which was to establish a fast-casual chain that could represent the new generation of Chinese restaurant and redefine Chinese food in the United States.