Chin’s Import Export Co., Inc.

In 1939, Leland H. Chin built the Pagoda Restaurant in Portland, Oregon and opened with a small capital investment. His wife, Frances Chin, agreed to work as a hostess without pay so that Leland could perform all his duties. In 1946, Leland sold the Pagoda Restaurant for his $16,000 and used the money to buy an old house on the corner of Northeast 42nd Street and Broadway. Two years later, in 1948, he demolished the building and built a new commercial building to house his kitchen restaurant and Chin's Import Export Company. (jaw).

Chin's Kitchen was subsequently sold in the 1970s, and Chin's moved to his 10,000-square-foot building in Northwest Portland purchased by Fred & Betty Jeanley. The company then moved to his 15,000-square-foot food facility on Swan Island for seven years before constructing a new building at the Portland Harbor's Rivergate Industrial Park in North Portland in 2008. . The new facility provides Chin with proximity to the port's Terminal 6 container facility and (3) container handling terminals, as well as a 20,000 square foot office warehouse complex. Rivergate's warehouse allows Chin's to stock over 2,000 of his SKUs (dry, chilled and frozen) for distribution to customers throughout the Pacific Northwest region. Importing canned products from Taiwan made up most of Chin's business, but in the late 1970s, imports shifted to Thailand due to Taiwan's high labor and production costs. Since then, the majority of imports have shifted from Thailand to the People's Republic of China (PRC). About 30% of Chin's business continues to be in food, while the remaining 70% of his business is in paper and plastic products for the hospitality industry.