Lynnwood advocate helps small businesses grow

LYNNWOOD – The owners of B Thai Cuisine in Lynnwood are thankful that Simreet Dhaliwal Gill helped them gain more business for their restaurant.

Their participation in Lynnwood Restaurant Week in April, along with a cooking demonstration on a television show, helped attract new customers to their 3-year-old restaurant tucked away in a small shopping center at 7528 196th St. SW.

Dhaliwal Gill is not a paid publicist who charges thousands of dollars for business owners to secure media attention, but an employee of the city of Lynnwood.

Her official title is Business Development Program manager, and her goal is to help small businesses in Lynnwood thrive.

Lynnwood may be known for Alderwood, the large, regional mall with its big-box stores, but Dhaliwal Gill said there are plenty of small businesses in the city.

“There are over 4,000 businesses incorporated in the city of Lynnwood, and many of them are small restaurants and various retail shops,” she said.

Dhaliwal Gill said her role is to help small businesses succeed and grow.

“A lot of people don’t think of their city government as the first place to turn for help,” she said. “We are regulators, we issue permits and licenses. We’ll yell at you for not installing the kitchen sink right or whatever.”

But Dhaliwal Gill wants small businesses to know that City Hall is not the enemy.

“Small businesses don’t know they have an advocate on their behalf who can help them obtain what they need to get,” she said.

Dhaliwal Gill met the restaurant owners, Jill and Joe Chantarachoti, in March when she was canvassing restaurant owners along with a colleague, Ryan Bush, tourism project manager for the city of Lynnwood.

The two were inviting restaurants to participate in the first-ever Lynnwood Restaurant Month in April.

B Thai Cuisine was one of 27 restaurants that participated in the restaurant month.

Armed with a $25,000 Snohomish County Tourism Grant, Dhaliwal Gill and Bush spent the money promoting the restaurants on social media and in other advertisements on radio and print media.

Most of the restaurants, like B Thai Cuisine, also offered discounted meal deals to help attract customers.

That brought a few more customers to B Thai, Jill Chantarachoti said.

In organizing restaurant month, Dhaliwal Gill said she also got to know Jill and Joe. She was moved by their story about how they had immigrated from Thailand in 2022, putting their life savings into opening their restaurant in Lynnwood.

Dhaliwal Gill said she also saw their struggle to develop a steady stream of customers.

Positive reviews of the food on Yelp had helped bring some customers to B Thai Cuisine, but Dhaliwal Gill figured there was more that could be done.

Dhaliwal Gill worked with Bush, and they found a receptive ear with a producer at New Day Northwest, a KING-TV show. That led to a six-minute cooking demonstration by Jill Chantarachoti, who is the chef at B Thai Cuisine.

For the television show, she cooked the Thai dish of Larb — ground pork tossed with chili pepper, roasted rice, red onion, green onion, mint, lime juice, fish sauce and cilantro.

Jill Chantarachoti said the television appearance brought some more patrons.

Dhaliwal Gill has worked with dozens of businesses in her more than 13 months on the job.

She said each business is different and each has different needs.

Another business owner, Cecilia Du, owner of C2 Education of Lynnwood, said Dhaliwal Gill walked into her strip shopping center tutoring business unexpectedly in May to offer her help.

“She had a great smile on her face, and she said she wanted to meet me to talk about my business,” Du said. “So, for me, it was quite surprising because the only people who drop by are students or marketing people asking for partnerships with us. In other words, they want to take your money.”

Du said her business has dropped as more parents have stopped tutoring for their children and teenagers because of uncertain economic times.

Du said Dhaliwal Gill listened to her struggles and acted as an intermediary, calling school districts to let them know about Du’s tutoring services.

Du said she felt uncomfortable reaching out directly to the school districts, fearing that they would view her business as competition, rather than an adjunct service to help students study and boost their grades.

Obtaining new clients is still a work in progress, Du said.

She said that Dhaliwal Gill is working with her to apply for a program at the University of Washington that would have MBA students help with social media to increase the tutoring service’s visibility.

Dhaliwal Gill said she and Du are also discussing shifting marketing to a more direct approach, pitching the tutoring services to students instead of their parents.

Sometimes the business connection is simpler.

Dhaliwal Gill makes rounds with community officers from the Lynnwood Police Department once every two weeks to check on small businesses to see if they have any security issues or need help with anything.

Chris Field, co-owner of the Seattle Granola Company, remembers Dhaliwal Gill telling him that there was a break-in near his industrial kitchen during a visit early this year.

Field said he didn’t have any concerns in his industrial kitchen space in Lynnwood, but was glad that Dhaliwal Gill and police members were being proactive.

Subsequently, he and Dhaliwal Gill have exchanged emails about various county grant opportunities available for businesses to promote tourism, revolving around the hosting of six games of the FIFA World Cup in Seattle in June and July.

Field has not yet decided whether to apply for those grants, and how his granola band could be connected to the World Cup tourism effort, but he appreciates Dhaliwal Gill giving him the information.

“It’s great to know someone from city hall who can help you,” he said.

Dhaliwal Gill also helps entrepreneurs find space for their new retail businesses in Lynnwood, but said that has been a struggle as rents have continued to rise.

“Business rent is increasing more as Lynnwood grows and becomes its own metropolis,” she said.

Dhaliwal Gill said the city maintains a database of available locations, and finding affordable rent is difficult.

“So if someone’s opening a nail salon and they need the rent to be less than $2,000 a month, it’s going to be hard to find that space,” she said.

Dhaliwal Gill grew up in a small-business background. Her parents were born in India, opening what Dhaliwal Gill said was a combination gas station, deli and convenience store in 2000 in Tacoma.

She said she worked behind the counter as a child, particularly on weekends, when she made pizza and sandwiches for customers.

“I was devoted to making sure that my parents’ business was off to a good start,” she said.

Dhaliwal Gill said her parents worked long hours, often seven days a week.

She said it gave her an appreciation of how hard small business owners work.

She never imagined, however, that one day her primary job would be helping small businesses.

Dhaliwal Gill graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in Medical Anthropology and Global Health in 2019. But she ended up getting a job with Snohomish County working in the Economic Development Department as an executive assistant before advancing to economic development and tourism specialist. In her final job at the county, she became the project manager for the planned Sustainable Aviation Fuel Center at Paine Field in Everett.

In Oct. 2024, Dhaliwal Gill began her job in Lynnwood.

Her work, she said, is tempered with the reality that uneven economic times are affecting consumers’ spending habits, putting a strain on small businesses.

“Simreet has helped us a lot,” Jill Chantarachoti said.

But as Chantarachoti talked on a Thursday night in November, the 50-seat restaurant was mostly empty.

“People are worried about the economy,” she said.

Joe Chantarachoti, who acts as the restaurant’s business manager, said he and his wife decided to move to Snohomish County from Thailand to give their two boys, Beamer, 12, and Brighten, 9, a chance at a decent education.

He said public schools in Thailand are inadequate and only the affluent can afford private schools.

Jill Chantarachoti worked as a pastry chef in Thailand but always wanted to open her own restaurant.

The Lynnwood restaurant specializes in healthy Thai cooking — an emphasis that Jill Chantarachoti said has also helped her leukemia.

Jill Chantarachoti said it can be exhausting working in the restaurant for 16 hours a day, six days a week.

“This is my life,” she said of the restaurant.

Chantarachoti said she is determined to succeed and somehow build the business further.

Dhaliwal Gill offered some direct assistance on November 16. She came to the restaurant with her husband, and they paid for dinner.

Randy Diamond: 425-339-3097; randy.diamond@heraldnet.com