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Guangzhou, Zhaoqing offer bountiful harvest for Hong Kong celebrity chef, businessmen as food industry takes off in Bay area
- Chef Vincent Ko has been able to build up his ‘private kitchen’ in Guangzhou by saving on rents, a bugbear for businessmen in Hong Kong
- Yong Sheng Group is spending US$250 million to set up a meat-processing plan in Zhaoqing to meet demand in the Greater Bay Area
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When celebrity chef Vincent Ko Wing-sun decided to branch out and open an outlet in his hometown in Guangzhou 19 years ago, he had no inkling it would become more profitable than its Hong Kong restaurant.
The 73-year old businessman, known as Master Ko to thousands who follow his television cooking show, decided in 2002 to set up a factory to produce Chinese cooking sauces, as well a 200-seat restaurant called Gao Zhuang Si Fang Cai, which means Ko’s private kitchen in Chinese.
Built on a 60,000-sq ft plot of family-owned land, the business prospered to the extent that the chef decided to shut his Tai Hei Hing Restaurant in Causeway Bay in 2013 to relocate and focus on growing his hometown dream.
“I wanted to retire in my hometown and only run a small restaurant,” he said in an interview. “However, it turned out that the restaurant became much more profitable than the one in Hong Kong.”
The 73-year old businessman is among Hong Kong’s pioneer entrepreneurs to venture into Guangdong at the turn of the new millennium, long before the southern mainland province became today the linchpin to the Greater Bay Area development plan.
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