Lin & Daughters

“There are so many things that can go wrong,” Lin says with a laugh.

Thankfully, she wound up finding her bike. And she found a simple way to help manage the many day-to-day needs of their restaurant, thanks to Apple Business Connect.

Located in Manhattan’s bustling West Village neighborhood, the restaurant was inspired by Becky’s experiences working in her family’s restaurant, where she helped make dumplings from scratch. “Food and service became our love language,” she says. “That instinct — to care for others through what you cook and how you serve — stayed with me.”

She decided to recreate that cozy atmosphere for her own family by launching Lin & Daughters, which serves up delicious dumplings, noodles, and other unique Chinese-style comfort foods. Since 2023, the restaurant has relied on Apple Business Connect to promote menu items, understand how customers searched for their restaurant, and boost the company’s brand awareness.

The restaurant first used Apple Business Connect to set up a place card featuring photos of Lin & Daughters, as well as the restaurant’s hours, ensuring the information would show up accurately across Maps, Siri, Wallet, and more. Lin & Daughters then began using the brand features for Mail and Tap to Pay on iPhone, which displays the restaurant’s name and logo in the Mail app and on iPhone when receiving payments.

“I’ve paid careful attention to branding from day one,” Lin says, noting that the Lin & Daughters logo is prominently displayed on its packaging, website, and on the restaurant’s window. “Seeing the logo in Mail was significant. It finally felt like our online brand presence had reached the level of polish of our brick-and-mortar one.”

The restaurant’s logo also appears during Tap to Pay on iPhone transactions, helping Lin & Daughters further build its brand by providing continuity across sales, including at pop-ups and street fairs. Tap to Pay on iPhone also came in handy when the restaurant lost its internet for a week, thanks to that hungry squirrel: “It saved us during that time,” Lin says. “We just used our phones to keep taking orders.”

Lin & Daughters uses showcases to highlight special menu items, like its Seasonal Cold Soba Salad with Shrimp — a dish that’s become a summer favorite. “When it’s 100 degrees and humid in New York City, a steaming bowl of noodles isn’t exactly calling your name,” Lin says. “So we chilled things down, by adding crisp salads and cold noodle dishes to the menu. Then we ran a showcase to spread the word.” And that proved to be the right strategy to take as the restaurants saw about a 30% increase in orders of the salad after adding it to a showcase.

Because Lin & Daughters offers such an intimate dining experience — the restaurant can comfortably seat about 10 customers at a time — delivery orders make up a substantial portion of its business. The company created a Custom Action Link for their place card to drive customers to order directly from the restaurant. And it uses Insights provided by Apple Business Connect to see where searches are coming from.

“We thought Insights was super cool, because of how hyperlocal businesses are in Manhattan,” Lin says.

Understanding their customer activity came in handy when Lin began planning Lin & Daughters’ next location. They examined their customers’ search activity using the heat map, looking for a Manhattan neighborhood where the restaurant already had brand recognition — but where there was room for growth.

That led them to the city’s Flatiron district, where Lin & Daughters opened its second location in the fall of 2025. With the help of Apple Business Connect, Lin can spend less time worrying about the hurdles of running a restaurant, and instead focus on sharing her passion for cooking. “Every time someone gives a compliment, or even just a smile and a nod, it’s like a little boost of love that keeps me going,” she says. “It reminds me why I started.”

Data provided by the customer. Apple was not involved in the gathering or analysis of the data reported.