Women in Business Month
Laila Yusufali
Laila Yusufali: six years, three restaurants…and she’s just 28 Article and Photos by Tara Nelson
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hen Squalicum High School graduate Laila Yusufali opened Black Pearl seven years ago on Barkley Boulevard, she didn’t exactly plan on the business blossoming into what it’s become today. Now with an everexpanding menu and three locations in downtown, Barkley Village, and Bakerview Plaza, she stands among Bellingham’s most enterprising 28-year-olds. Black Pearl has grown from its humble beginnings as a bubble tea shop that Yusufali opened in 2007 in a tiny shopping complex on Barkley Boulevard. Bubble tea is an exotic fruit beverage that originated in Taiwan and has since expanded to many Asian coun56 | BUSINESSPULSE.COM
what people liked. Laila said a lot of the menu was inspired by her desire to eat a balanced diet that wasn’t always boring. Later, when her father realized how well the business was going, he quit his job and went to work for her as well, assisting with accounting, payroll, and finding ways to keep costs down in the kitchen. Momentum kept building and in 2010, she opened a new 1,500-square-foot restaurant and added more Thai items, like Pad Thai and curries, as well as vegetarian dishes. “I knew the downtown area would have a lot of college students so I wanted to have items that were affordable and with plenty of vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free options,” Yusufali said. “Those things are very popular right now.” Her plan worked. In 2011, KOMO 4 News voted Black Pearl the best vegetarian restaurant in Bellingham. Laila Yusufali moved when her parents came to Bellingham from Los Angeles in 1992 so the family could do business in Vancouver. That business her dad had planned didn’t pan out, but the family stayed in Bellingham anyway because of the cost of living at the time. After different business ventures, her mother’s passion for cooking led them into investing in a couple of food trucks in Skagit County.
tries as well as the United States. It can be milk, juice, or tea-based and can include fruit-flavored jelly balls or tapioca pearls. The almost immediate success surprised even Yusufali herself. She made profit her first month in business. At first customers wanting bubble tea could also order some light entrees or appetizers. But Yusufali said she soon started offering more menu items to keep customers excited about coming back. During the first two years she enlisted the help of her mother and began adding new healthy options to the menu, including pho and vermicelli bowls. The two tested and developed Mongolian Beef: Mongolian beef vermicelli bowl with fresh recipes and found out herbs, vegetables, lettuce and a rice vinegar and lime dressing.