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In a spacious room, one wall lined with refrigerators, another with glass, two people work busily behind their desks. At one desk is a chef, shaping fish in decorative ways, and later, the other desk will hold a businessman working on his computer. According to Mr. Jason Riungel, owner of the Westport restaurant Simple Sushi, his motivation for starting the business was to get back to his roots.

According to Riungel, he attributes his background to some of his motivation to open his restaurant. He was raised on an island in the Pacific called Palau, where cooking was a family ordeal and has memories of learning to cook with his parents. He said he enjoys the memories and misses using the skills he has gained over the years.

‘I am more in the accounting,’ Riungel said. ‘I actually would rather do the cooking. They are both vital though, and I am the one that has to do the paperwork.’

Riungel, a Palauan immigrant, founded Simple Sushi three years ago and did both the cooking and paperwork at first. His motivation for opening his business was his love for food and cooking. Riungel says he knew he wanted to work with food after working in the Marriott Hotel in Kansas City. After working at the Marriot he worked at Bumblefish, now one of his competitors.

‘I opened because there was an opportunity when my ex-company dropped some of the clients I was loyal to, and I decided instead of doing it for them I’d do it for myself,’ Riungel said.

According to Ms. Digna Padlla, Simple Sushi’s chef, she was hired on last year to do all of the cooking Riungel had wanted to do originally.

‘My job is basically the opposite of Jason’s,’ Padlla said. ‘I cook, and he delivers and does the business part.’

According to Riungel, Padlla’s job is to make the food, and his is to take it daily to businesses around Kansas City and occasionally to private parties in addition to doing the company’s paperwork. Sophomore Mary Heiman ate the sushi at one of the private parties and was impressed by the effort the team put into it.

‘[Riungel] had a lot of different types of food, and it was all arranged really nicely,’ Heiman said.

And while Riungel says he enjoys the client interactions and feedback, he is hoping to get his business to a place where he can get back more to the cooking portion of his business.

‘I have to do the administrative work for now,’ Riungel said. ‘There is no one else to do it for me. I really want to start cooking more though.”

He has to do the administration now, but Riungel said he thinks Simple Sushi is on the right track. He considers it to be successful in terms of breaking even in sales, but that it is not the point he would like it to be. He hopes to get back to what he loves and the reason why he started the company in the first place.

‘A large part of my career I base from… my love of cooking and food in general,’ Riungel said.