How Hong Kong bakery hit the big time during the Sars epidemic
Started more than 50 years ago, baked goods manufacturer Heung Heung flourished at an unlikely time thanks to an ingenious idea from its founder, Keung Shing-woo
From across the street, you can smell it. The warm, buttery aroma of freshly baked bread wafts out of the bakery windows and lingers in the crisp autumn air.
“Office workers in the area often follow the scent into the building,” Peter Keung Chi-sum, executive director of Heung Heung Food Products, says with a chuckle. “We don’t make much from these individual sales but, of course, we won’t turn anyone away.”
Keung, together with his wife, Tammy, manages the bakery that his father, Keung Shing-woo, built. Keung Snr was taught to make bread by a Western chef at a canteen. In 1966, he invested HK$3,000 and with three friends opened Heung Heung Bakery next to the public toilet on Davis Street, in Kennedy Town, a fact that soon became an in joke among the staff, given that the shop’s name literally translates as “fragrant fragrant”.
Keung Snr dedicated half a century to the bakery; he retired in 2015 at the age of 93. Today, Heung Heung employs 50 staff in a 17,000 sq ft office and kitchen facility in Wong Chuk Hang, churning out more than 3,000 golden loaves a day.