Joyce Chen opened her first restaurant, Joyce Chen Restaurant, at 617 Concord Avenue in Cambridge in 1958. According to her son Stephen, here she pioneered the all-you-can-eat Chinese dinner buffet to boost sales on otherwise-slow Tuesday and Wednesday nights. She also used the buffet format to allow customers to sample unfamiliar authentic dishes at their own pace. She promoted healthy Chinese cooking and refused to use Red Dye No. 2 and other food coloring at her restaurants. For Chinese-speaking and English-speaking staff and customers to communicate more easily, Chen introduced the practice of numbering menu items.