Conventional bakery Tai Chong Kok has been open in Singapore since 1935
For practically a century, Tai Chong Kok has been a fixture in Singapore’s bakery scene, recognized for its handcrafted Cantonese pastries and conventional mooncakes.
Opened in 1935, the bakery as soon as drew lengthy queues at its Chinatown stall on Sago Road, with keen prospects lining up for its freshly baked items.
However behind the legacy lies a far harder story: one in all household tensions, outdated practices, monetary dangers, and an F&B panorama that spares nobody.
Taking up the household enterprise
At present, Tai Chong Kok is helmed by Ham Weng Seng, the third-generation proprietor of the enterprise.
However in the event you requested Weng Seng’s older kinfolk, few would have guessed he’d sooner or later take over the household enterprise. It was based by his grandfather, Tham Kai Chee, and after his passing, management of the bakery fell to his 4 sons.
Rising up, Weng Seng didn’t know a lot in regards to the enterprise. “My dad was simply one of many administrators. My mother just isn’t concerned within the enterprise. In order that they by no means talked about enterprise at house. There have been different brothers and sisters that had been concerned within the enterprise again then,” he shared.
He did finally find yourself serving to out within the enterprise, although. After finishing his nationwide service, Weng Seng’s father roped him in, assigning him to promote desserts and pastries, deal with common duties, and even make deliveries.
“Because you carry the identical surname, you might be anticipated to do all the things,” he recalled. There was no particular remedy, simply lengthy hours and minimal pay.
After working throughout the household enterprise for 12 years, Weng Seng determined to step away and enterprise into different passions, together with working two music outlets in addition to artwork galleries in Singapore and China.
However after studying that one in all his uncles had deliberate to promote his share within the enterprise, Weng Seng determined to grab the chance and turn into the de facto proprietor of Tai Chong Kok.
On the time, his uncles had been pessimistic in regards to the enterprise’s future, seeing dangers and challenges at each flip. “To my uncles, the cup [was] half empty. To me, it [was] half full. Distinction in notion, I suppose.”
“Change is tough”
To purchase out his uncle’s shares, Weng Seng re-mortgaged his home, taking over important private danger. His imaginative and prescient was formidable: modernise and elevate Tai Chong Kok whereas preserving its traditions. However reaching that was removed from straightforward, as he confronted pushback from his household.
“The earlier generations have been doing issues their approach for many years. Change is tough—nobody needs to entertain new ideas and new methods of doing issues,” he shared.
“All of the companions should sleep on the identical mattress and have the identical dream. It’s tough to run a enterprise in any other case.” Whereas he didn’t go into element, this pressure was a part of why he needed to purchase out his uncle’s shares to take management.
On prime of this, taking on got here with huge prices, from assembly compliance necessities to establishing a central kitchen to scale operations. There was no “correct accounting,” licenses, or employment passes. Weng Seng needed to set up SOPs from scratch.
Industrial kitchen gear can be very costly. He shared {that a} rotary oven might value round S$50,000. “Nobody will lend you one to check out. Clearly, my opponents is not going to share with me the kind of gear that they’re utilizing. So, no trial and error.”
“If I misinterpret the market, I’d lose the shirt off my again. I can lose the shirt off my again, however not my youngsters,” he added, underscoring the stakes of taking on a decades-old enterprise.
Progress has stalled
Weng Seng’s efforts paid off. By 2023, Tai Chong Kok had 9 shops, all that includes trendy retailer fronts designed to enchantment to right this moment’s shoppers.
“Singaporeans are well-travelled nowadays,” he famous. “Lovely procuring malls and shops in Bangkok, Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo, and Shanghai set expectations. If my shops aren’t enticing, nobody will go in.”
Nevertheless, a lot of the expansion has stalled since then. Singapore’s F&B market is “ultra-competitive,” and the pandemic took a lot of the wind out of its sails.
“We’ve but to recuperate our losses, after which all the things went up. Rents, utilities, payroll, logistics, and compliance prices went up considerably. I feel that it derails each enterprise’s plan by 5 years right here.”
On prime of that, world uncertainties like provide chain disruptions, wars, and the US tariffs proceed to place strain on operations. As such, Tai Chong Kok’s focus proper now could be on rebuilding funds earlier than contemplating any additional enlargement, particularly as competitors in Singapore’s F&B scene continues to accentuate.
The one individuals promoting mooncakes again within the days had been the bakeries in Chinatown. These days we’ve eating places, cafes, airways, newspaper corporations, hoteliers, ice-cream sellers and durian sellers promoting mooncakes.
The “onerous fact”
When requested about the way forward for Tai Chong Kok, Weng Seng remained realistically bleak, acknowledging the uncertainties and challenges that lie forward.
“Everybody thinks F&B is a simple enterprise. I don’t know the place they obtained that false impression from,” he stated. “Simply take a look at the businesses listed on the SGX and their backside traces—what number of of them are literally in F&B?”
Working a bakery, he defined, is capital-intensive, labour-intensive, and tough to scale. It’s not a viable enterprise mannequin if the “boss must be bodily current each day.”
Hiring is one other problem: few individuals wish to work for an SME in right this moment’s market, and as such, planning a succession for the corporate has confirmed to be extraordinarily tough.
Weng Seng shared that it requires somebody with each area data of the F&B business and hands-on expertise inside Tai Chong Kok. Even with the precise individual, not all the things will go based on plan, and navigating the way forward for a household enterprise isn’t easy.
That’s why Weng Seng is blunt in regards to the future: “The corporate won’t be round in 20 years’ time. That’s the onerous fact.”
Featured Picture Credit score: American Categorical/ Tai Chong Kok
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