Van has been a restaurateur for over thirty years. Van first learned how to prepare a Caesar Salad tableside atop the Hilton Hotel in San Diego in the sixties. Van, along with his two partners, Jack Amon and Ken Brown, opened the Marx Brothers Café in 1979. The boutique restaurant of fourteen tables operates out of the second oldest cottage in downtown Anchorage. In 2020, Marx Bros. Cafe was inducted in the the Alaska Business Hall of Fame.