SPRINGFIELD – The
Student Prince Café and The Fort Restaurant is a special place at Christmas.
But it’s not the evergreen décor that makes it special for Nathan Yee, director of hospitality for the Bean Restaurant Group and part of the third generation of
Yee family members working for Bean.
For him, it’s the busing of tables, the running of food, the greeting of guests and the general — some would say overwhelming — busyness of the place.
“It’s a rush for me,” Yee, said.“I love it.”
Bean Restaurant group — which took over the Fort in 2014 in partnership with Peter Picknelly and others — will be honored in May by the Greater Springfield Convention and Visitors Bureau as the 2023 Howdy Awards for Hospitality Excellence Spotlight Award winner.
The Howdys honor front-line hospitality service workers each year.Winners of most awards are secret and announced with much fanfare at the ceremony Monday, May 15, at 6 p.m.at the
MassMutual Center.
“It’s very cool,” Yee said of the Howdy honor, emphasizing that it is for a whole team of about 500 employees working at 16 separate business locations.
Yee’s grandparents, the late Jung Tai “Johnny” Yee and his wife Linda Yee, founded the Hu-ke-Lau in Chicopee in 1965.
“To think it all started with that one Chinese food location, and with Polynesian food, in Chicopee , Massachusetts,” Yee said.
The Yees grew, first with The Halfway House which the Yee family purchased in 2002 and continues to operate the cozy local pub.
Those 500 employees include 11 members of the Yee family.
Linda, now 85, is still involved.
“She tells us what we are doing the wrong way, what we are doing the right way and what we should be doing better,” Nathan Yee said.
That number of 16 units includes three seasonal locations at the Big E and a food truck.
And soon it will include two new restaurants.
With Picknelly and other investors, the Yees took over the ailing White Hut in 2020.
Tuesday, the company closed on the $300,000 purchase — recorded at the Hampden County Registry of Deeds – on the former
PeoplesBank location at 825 Hampden St.in Holyoke which will be another White Hut.
“We are in the design stages of that now, we are still working on the concept for it.
But it will have that White Hut look,” he said.
And the Yees have settled on a name — Copper + Kin — for their restaurant inside the renovated
13-31 Elm on Springfield’s Court Square.
It’ll be American fare with hand-cut pasta and other on-trend offerings, Yee said.The plan is to create a space that is fancy enough for date night but relaxed enough to bring a family.
That’s where the name comes from: copper, because of the weathered copper on the historic building.“Kin, because it’s a place to gather with family,” he said.
The plan is to be open at 13-31 Elm this year.
At 24, he’s worked in the business since the age of 12.
He was doing a lot of cleaning, carrying and moved on to serving, bartending.
“It’s a lot of long nights.We wash a lot of dishes.It’s a lot of cleaning,” he said.“It’s what my family has always done.”.
