Amy Le is the co-owner and chef at Saucy Porka. She spends her days creating unique and fun menus at her two restaurant locations, but when she needs repairs done at her restaurant, she relies on Fixer to get the job done efficiently and skillfully. She explains how, as a small business owner, it was imperative that she found reliable handypeople to help when things broke down – and Fixer was her answer.

Set the scene for us. You ordered a Fixer because…

As a small business owner, a lot of things break and you need to have them repaired. So what I always struggled with, especially my first few years as a business owner, was finding dependable, reliable, trustworthy, repair women or men to come in and work on some basic stuff: fixing the electrical and the lights, a leaky sink or just patching up a piece of drywall. But when you try to Google certain places it’s kind of like a crapshoot. You don’t know what you’re going to get in return.

And so when we discovered Fixer, the first experience I had was really positive and I’ve been using them ever since. They’ve been efficient, reliable and trustworthy.

Having dependable, reliable people is extremely important because when you’re running a business, it’s about efficiency. And so you don’t want to spend your time having to backtrack and waiting for them to call back and fix something because it wasn’t done the first time correctly. So I think that for us, finding somebody like Fixer that have come through consistently, have done a really great job, that makes my job easier.

Your restaurant is open six or seven days a week. Given that you have to stay open no matter what, how was the experience of working with Fixer to schedule your appointments? 

Fixer has been great about scheduling especially since the response to a lot of the things that happen is reactionary. You’re not planning for your sink to start breaking or water start to leak.  [It’s convenient to] shoot a photo, send it off really quickly and then they respond literally within seconds. So I really like to be able to go online, schedule [the work] and then know exactly what time they’re going to come the very next day. They give you a framework. And they’ve always shown up on time.

What kinds of projects has Fixer accomplished for you?

They’ve come out to help me change the air filters, clean the AC units, and the heating units. They’ve also been able to help when a couple of our electrical outlets have shorted just because some of these restaurants are a little bit older and there’s just wear and tear. But basically coming in and changing out some of the electrical work in there to get that fixed.

Leaky sinks are always a big thing in restaurants. There are always pipes bursting or sinks not functioning correctly because the screws and nuts and bolts wear away. So coming in and doing a 30-minute job like that, repairs and that kind of work, saves you money.

They’re in and out. And I’m still able to function and keep the restaurant running while they’re doing their work.

How did Fixer’s mission in terms of driving education and fair employment factor into your decision to hire Fixer?

I think as a female-owned business, I’m always really supportive of other industries and other businesses that are trying to invoke change. I love the fact that Fixer is working with a new generation of people. They’re providing long-term stability. And while not everybody is going to be an astronaut, I think that somebody always needs a plumber and always needs a wall to be repaired.