SINGAPORE: How brothers Hart Pong and Zhi Yong expanded Song Fa Bak Kut Teh, which their father Yeo Eng Song founded in 1969, into a chain of restaurants in Singapore and Indonesia.
When Yeo Eng Song started Song Fa Bak Kut Teh out of a pushcart back in 1969, all he wanted was to provide a decent living for his young family.
“I started selling bak kut teh to support myself and my family,” he tells Enterprise in Mandarin.
At 18, Yeo had learnt how to cook the Teochew style of bak kut teh while working as an assistant at a bak kut teh stall. However, it wasn’t until he was 21 that he decided to sell bak kut teh from a pushcart together with a partner. The duo set up shop at the now defunct Johore Road that ran parallel to Queen Street and Victoria Street.
While the pushcart saw regular patronage from taxi drivers, who would congregate in the area after work, Yeo points out that there was little he and his partner could do to increase business. “When we were operating from a pushcart, we sold two bak kut teh dishes — pork ribs and pig’s tail. We were limited to selling one pot of soup a day because of the constraints of the pushcart,” he says. It didn’t help that whenever it rained, business would come to a standstill.
Today, that humble pushcart business has expanded into a chain of five outlets in Singapore and four more in Indonesia. Yeo credits Song Fa’s expansion and success to his two sons, Hart Pong and Zhi Yong, who have taken over the business. Both of them had been helping out at their father’s shop since they were in primary school. “We started with tasks such as scooping rice and washing the dishes and as we grew older, my father would get us to take orders and serve food,” recalls Hart Pong.
Yeo points out that he would have wound up the business if none of his children had wanted to take over. “I’d planned on running the shop for as long as I could, and if I couldn’t do it any more, I’d just close shop. Before my sons took over, I had only one outlet at Rochor Centre. I thought business was good, so there was no need to look at expansion,” he says. According to him, the outlet was selling an average of 700 bowls of bak kut teh a day.
Coffeeshop days
Bak kut teh in Hokkien or rou gu cha in Mandarin literally means “meat bone tea”. It is a Chinese soup dish consisting of pork ribs simmered in a broth of herbs and spices. The dish is usually consumed with tea, as that is thought to help dissolve the large amount of fat in the soup. There are two variants of bak kut teh — Teo chew style and Hokkien style. The former, which is more popular among Singaporeans, features a clear peppery soup, while the Hokkien version is darker because it is soy sauce-based.
In the early 1970s, the government required hawkers to be licensed and relocated them to hawker centres. Yeo rented a space at a coffeeshop on Victoria Street. With his own stall, he introduced more dishes, such as pork trotters and salted vegetables. He points out that a variety of dishes is necessary in order to appeal to more customers.
The way he tells it, he got his sons to help out at the stall because he was short-handed. If they had found part-time jobs elsewhere, he would not have objected, as they paid quite well. Hart Pong, for instance, used to take on F&B stints during his school holidays. However, he would still help out at the stall on his off days.
Concept stores
“I thought it was good for them to work elsewhere so they could gain new experiences and learn how different businesses are run,” says Yeo. It is no surprise then that his sons grew up aspiring to run their own businesses. They attended RMIT University, with Hart Pong majoring in entrepreneurship and Zhi Yong, in business management.
Prior to Hart Pong’s graduation in 2006, Yeo had asked him about his future plans and offered to let him take over his shop at Rochor Centre. The shop had relocated there from its Victoria Street premises after the coffeeshop was demolished. By then, the new outlet had garnered a following of regular customers and was drawing in the lunchtime crowd.
Hart Pong, who had initially wanted to launch his own business, saw the opportunity to revamp Song Fa. “I told my dad that if I were to take over the business, I would want to introduce a concept store,” he says. “At that point, all our competitors were also running stalls in coffeeshops, so I was thinking of coming up with something different.”
Yeo agreed to his plan and Hart Pong decided to work full-time at the outlet for a year before launching the concept store in 2007. “All along, my brother and I had been helping my dad at the shop, but when it came to learning the skill of cooking bak kut teh and knowing what to do when problems arise, I had to [learn the nitty-gritty],” he says.
Meanwhile, Yeo started looking for available shop space for the new concept store. He remembers bringing Hart Pong to view potential units, but none of them was suitable until he saw an ad for a unit at 11 New Bridge Road. “I used to walk past that shop and I always had this gut feeling that having a shop at that corner was good. It used to be a coffeeshop, but it had changed hands a number of times. I called to enquire and when the owner said it would cost $30,000 to take over the existing lease, I agreed to it immediately,” he recounts.
His intuition proved to be right. Since the shop’s opening, it has been attracting a new pool of customers in addition to the regulars. Located directly across Clarke Quay Central and within walking distance of Raffles Place, the shop draws long queues during lunchtime. Because of the huge crowds, the owner of the shophouse a few units away approached the family to rent his unit and it has since become its second outlet.
Overseas following
Thanks to the shop at New Bridge Road, Song Fa’s bak kut teh has been gaining a following from overseas visitors. “Travel agencies love to bring tourists to that outlet because they can bring them sightseeing nearby,” says Hart Pong. Song Fa is now recommended by the Lonely Planet as one of the go-to restaurants for bak kut teh in Singapore.
The popularity of Song Fa among tourists, particularly Indonesian Chinese travellers, has led Hart Pong to franchise the brand in Indonesia. The first outlet was opened in Jakarta last year and there are four outlets there now. “The recipe we use there is exactly the same as the one in Singapore that we have used since 1969. A lot of Indonesian Chinese like our recipe, so there was no need to tweak it,” says Hart Pong.
When it comes to overseas expansion, he believes a franchise or joint venture is the best option for Song Fa. “Expanding overseas is not easy. You need a large network to set up business on your own. Instead of navigating those obstacles, why not just let the locals, who are familiar with the policies there, do it? Our part is to help ensure the quality of the food and set up the restaurants,” he explains.
Meanwhile, his brother, Zhi Yong, who joined the business in 2010, is working on researching and developing a range of spices and condiments for tourists to take home. Currently, Song Fa has a box of 10 sachets of bak kut teh spices that customers can purchase from any of its stores.
The existing formula was inherited from Yeo, who started packaging bak kut teh spices for sale at wet markets and selected Sheng Siong outlets. “The idea started when we had only one bak kut teh outlet. A relative who had a stall at Lavender Food Square told me that he had been receiving enquiries from tourists for bak kut teh spices, so I concocted the formula and packaged the spices for sale,” recalls Yeo.
When Zhi Yong joined, he decided to give the packaging a new look. “We had been using this old-school red-and-yellow box, so we wanted to redesign it to make it more attractive,” he says. The strategy worked and the bak kut teh spice packets are a big hit with tourists from Taiwan and Hong Kong. “Bak kut teh can be found only in Singapore — if you don’t compare it with the Hokkien variant served in Malaysia — so in terms of spices, there are only that many places you can find them,” says Zhi Yong.
Cooking bak kut teh with the spice sachets is a fuss-free affair. “You just add water, pork ribs and a little bit of light or dark soy sauce and simmer for an hour. It’s easy to find these ingredients at home,” Zhi Yong points out. He notes that the take-home spice packets serve as a good form of branding and marketing for Song Fa. “Every time a tourist eats at our outlet, they like the food and bring back our spice sachets. Through word of mouth, more of their friends find out about us and visit us when they come to Singapore.”
He is planning on producing seasoning for pork trotters and Song Fa’s own five-spice powder. “It has become a separate business and sales is growing at a steady rate. Our target is to slowly move into the spice business, but we cannot do that with just one product,” he says.
New way of doing things
For his part, Yeo believes the changes introduced by Hart Pong and Zhi Yong are for the better. “I’m retired now, so I’ll just let them run the business. But I will give them advice now and then,” he says.
He reveals that he was not accustomed to some of the changes his sons introduced at the concept store initially. For example, when the first concept store opened, Hart Pong implemented a point of sale (POS) system to keep track of how many bowls were sold and which were the outlet’s most popular dishes. Within a few days, Yeo ordered the staff to revert to using the previous method of mentally taking down orders, and collecting payment and giving change from a waist pouch. “I was used to the old way of counting on the spot how much a customer needed to pay. In the past, people did mental calculations. Using the POS system was more efficient in helping us keep track of sales, but it was slower,” he says. “You need to be fast if you want to drive sales.”
Thankfully, it didn’t take him long to see the merits of using a POS system. He notes, “When we were collecting payments manually, some customers would leave without paying or we would miscalculate the bill. Now, it doesn’t happen.”
Hart Pong and Zhi Yong, on the other hand, are putting into practice their father’s advice of moving fast in order to drive sales. They have streamlined the ordering process such that when a customer is queuing for a table, an employee is there to take their order using an iPad. Once the customer is assigned a seat, the order is sent directly to the kitchen and within a few minutes, food is served. Zhi Yong emphasises that one of the keys to a good bak kut teh is serving it hot. “If the soup is not hot, the ingredients don’t blend well together.”
The brothers are working on attracting younger customers. “Our goal is to have them have their first taste of bak kut teh at our outlets. It’s not like in the past, when only the older people ate bak kut teh,” says Zhi Yong. Song Fa is now on social media platforms to reach out to the younger crowd.
When it comes to expansion, Hart Pong says they are in no hurry to do so. “I do not want to expand rapidly at the expense of being able to control the quality and service standards. My father’s advice has always been: Don’t rush to expand. If you think you can expand, then you expand.” While the brothers do not plan to open new Song Fa outlets, they reveal that they will be looking at starting new food concepts such as a self-service kiosk for the younger crowd.
“We will have a maximum of only seven or eight Song Fa stores in Singapore because competition is very stiff,” says Hart Pong. Song Fa currently has five outlets — one each at The Seletar Mall, Chinatown Point and UE BizHub East, and two at New Bridge Road.
Not forgetting their roots, the brothers have incorporated a replica of the pushcart their father used for his food business in the design of each Song Fa outlet. “After working for our dad from the time we were young, we have gained an appreciation for his hard work and the things he has done,” says Hart Pong.
This article appeared in the Enterprise of Issue 689 (Aug 10) of The Edge Singapore.