Prototype Issue
At the Kitchen Sink Charlie Lao is the Undisputed Master of LA Restaurant Supplies
By Steve Coulter
(page 1 of 1)Everything about Charles Lao is exaggerated. The 54-year-old’s boyish face is constantly betrayed by a near-toothless smile and a maniacal laugh that echoes down the towering aisles of his restaurant-equipment superstore Charlie’s Fixtures.
Lao is to restaurant-equipment sales what Crazy Gideon is to consumer electronics—a dyed-in-the-wool salesman who has used the quirks of his own personality to make the drudgery of shopping for dunnage racks and balloon whisks a little more interesting. He will also ease your pain as you spend tens of thousands on industrial stoves, reach-in refrigerators and overhead ovens.
It’s no wonder his Washington Blvd. store was a regular feature on season two of Bravo’s popular cable reality show Top Chef. In 1989, Lao achieved gross sales of $100,000, a figure that blossomed into $20 million in 2006. Although such growth would be noteworthy in any industry, it is extremely impressive when you consider estimates by the California Restaurant Association that an average of 23% of restaurants go out of business during their first year.
Of course, Lao will be the first to tell you that there is a big difference between being in the restaurant business and being a restaurant-business supplier. Statistics from the California State Board of Equalization suggest that there are more than 23,000 restaurants in LA, all of which have needed to outfit their kitchens and dining rooms at some point.
“I guess I’m a natural-born salesman,” Lao says. “One of my customers [from a previous job] was closing down his restaurant, so I convinced him to sell his equipment to me for $5,000. Without even opening my shop, I turned around and sold that equipment for $35,000.”
The son of a Chinese department-store owner, Lao was raised in the Philippines. He arrived in LA in 1981, and almost immediately landed a job as the counter clerk at a small restaurant-supply store on Los Angeles St. Working six-day weeks for only $700 a month, he quickly immersed himself in restaurant culture and began learning the trade.
Lao soon moved to a midsize company with 15 employees, and by 1985 his income had ballooned to $80,000 a year. He then went to work for one of the largest dealers of used restaurant equipment, conducting a ten-month study of that company’s business model before signing on with Avery Restaurant Equipment in 1988.
That position came with its own set of problems for the gregarious salesman. “I had to deal with too many bosses,” Lao says. “It made my life so miserable. After 18 months, I was sure I knew what was going on at the big companies.” In November 1989, Lao opened the original Charlie’s Fixtures in a small storefront on Washington Blvd. in LA.
In 1994, he bought the entire building, then gutted it to make room for more and more equipment, much to the chagrin of his neighbors, who complained to the city. Lao had neglected to obtain the necessary permits for the demolition and construction he had carried out to accommodate his growing business. “[The city] took one look at the plans and said, ‘This is supposed to be five stores, why is it one big building?’ Within two hours, they told me I had to vacate the premises.”
Luckily, Lao had acquired a second warehouse—on Venice Blvd. the same year, and he was able to move his entire inventory there almost overnight. These days, Charlie’s Fixtures on Venice Blvd. houses a massive showroom that looks like a Costco store. Meanwhile, the Washington Blvd. location serves as a warehouse that Lao monitors remotely from his desktop computer.
He recently bought a white, two-story house behind Charlie’s Fixtures on Venice, which he plans to use as his business office. As for the future, Lao is currently searching for a third warehouse to keep up with demand, but he’s holding off while the real-estate market settles down. In the meantime, he plans to continue working 14-hour days, streamlining his business to foster further growth. “The truth is,” Lao says, “I’m a workaholic. But I still have to be in bed by 9 to get my beauty sleep.”
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