This article first appeared in Enterprise, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on September 14, 2020 - September 20, 2020

In the 19th century, most of the Chinese population in Kuala Lumpur lived around the Petaling Street area, also known as Chinatown. Over the years, that population spilled over to neighbouring Pudu, a relatively rural area at that time. In fact, it was known as Ban Shan Ba, or “half jungle” in Mandarin, which pretty much described its state in those days.

Eventually, people from other parts of the country moved there in search of opportunities. Mon Sang was one of them. He hailed from a family that made

dim sum in Ipoh and decided to test his business acumen in Kuala Lumpur. So, in 1965, he set up a stall selling fried and baked dim sum in front of the Da Hua Cinema, one of the famous cinemas in Pudu.

That was the beginning of Mon Kee Confectionery Sdn Bhd, which became famous for its traditional Chinese pastries such as siew pao (baked barbecued pork or chicken bun, typically glazed with egg wash and sesame seeds), kaya kok (kaya puff) and egg tarts. Many Malaysians in the Klang Valley may have grown up consuming its products in Chinese kopitiams and malls without knowing anything about the company.

Today, Mon Kee is led by Adam Fong, the son of Mon Sang. And the company is now present in more than 80 locations across Peninsular Malaysia, most of which are in the Klang Valley.

“It was just a stall when we started out. The food was made at home and then delivered to the stall on a tricycle. We lived nearby and I had to help out in the kitchen at home,” says Fong.

The stall was strategically located near a bus stop. Buses were the main mode of transport back then. “A lot of people rushed to catch the bus and had no time for breakfast. So, they bought the pastries to eat in the office or at home. The bus stop was like a hub where people could socialise or shop,” says Mon Kee director Wong Chee Chung, who started working with Fong three years ago.

Fong officially began helping his father to handle the business in 1991. His father had no plans to expand beyond that one stall, but Fong had bigger aspirations and opened a shop in Pudu in 1994. The shop had a kitchen, so they no longer needed to bake pastries at home.

Fong continued to open more Mon Kee stalls in Chinese kopitiams until five years ago, when 1 Utama Shopping Centre invited the company to set up a store in the mall. He decided to test the market by selling the baked goods on a pushcart during a Mooncake Festival bazaar in the mall. “The response was very good, so we set up a store there — our first in a mall,” he says.

Mon Kee has continued to open stores in malls. Some of the locations include Centrepoint in Bandar Utama and Paradigm Mall in Kelana Jaya. The decision to move from traditional kopitiams to malls comes with the company’s desire to transform with the times.

“We want to attract different customers. Malaysia is becoming a developed nation and the middle class is growing,” says Wong.

“In the past, our business used to target people from the lower middle class. But now, this demographic is shrinking.

“We want to target the middle-income group, who do not go to bus stops anymore. They go to shopping malls. If we want the next generation to eat our food, we need to meet them there.”

This is just one of the changes that the company is making to capitalise on new opportunities. However, the transformation has not been easy. When Mon Kee was first presented the opportunity to expand to malls, Fong and Wong had to work through their disagreements and concerns.

“He said I had a very old-fashioned way of thinking, so there was some friction. At the time, I still had my father’s traditional mindset,” Fong acknowledges.

Wong chips in, “But he is actually very open minded, sometimes to the point that I get scared. I am very proud of what he has done over the years.

“The price of labour and materials will keep going up. If you do not expand an old business, you will become irrelevant. He decided to expand the company and we now have 80 stores around the country.”

Nowadays, Fong handles all the back-end work at the central kitchen in Pudu, where the food is baked daily before being delivered to locations in the Klang Valley. There are also kitchens in the other states to serve those locations. Wong is in charge of the business operations.

They have narrowed down their menu items to their best-selling pastries such as the pork and chicken siew pao, kaya puff, yam puff, egg tart and chicken pie. Mon Kee also sells pastries for weddings and full moon celebrations.

Chinese families usually hold a ceremony to celebrate a baby’s first full month. It is a tradition to send a full moon gift package to relatives and friends to convey their joy at the event.

Despite the changes that have been made, Fong tries to maintain the principles held dearly by his father. A key one is that all the food sold must be fresh.

“While we do put the materials in a freezer, it is only for a few days. Everything is baked fresh in the morning,” says Wong.

Like his father, Fong prioritises the quality of the food. He is in the Pudu kitchen every day from the early morning to supervise the process. The recipes are mostly the same from his father’s time.

“Everything is 100% made by us and not outsourced to anyone. We make the kaya for the kaya puffs and put in a lot of gula melaka (palm sugar). We know our food is safe and of high quality,” says Wong.

However, they have made some minor changes to the recipes and products. For instance, the food is less sweet than before and the siew pao, kaya puffs and other products are now smaller because modern consumers like to sample a variety of products. This is different from before when Mon Kee’s customers wanted the siew pao to be large and filling enough to serve as an entire meal.

“People used to eat the siew pao for breakfast, so we took care not to make them small, which would not fill their stomachs. That is why at that time, our siew pao was slightly bigger than most of the others in the market,” says Wong.

Most of Mon Kee’s customers now are families who buy the products for their children. In some areas, office workers buy the egg tarts and siew pao as snacks.

“Some malls have asked us to open a store in their premises, but if we do not see a business opportunity there, we won’t go. The location is very important to us. We need a place where a lot of people will walk through, like the bus stop where Mon Kee started,” says Wong.

Some people may think these traditional pastries are unpopular with the younger generation, but he begs to differ. “Nowadays, young people want traditional things. They hanker after what their parents ate, but they want it served in a modern environment. You can see this in the Petaling Street area, where traditional shops are being spruced up and modernised.

“The younger generation will spread the message via social media and they are more adventurous in their culinary choices. We will continue with our traditional ways of managing the ingredients, but the environment and channels will be modern.”

The team is now cooking up a new plan for next year. They will be starting a new range of products called Uncle Moon, the packaging of which will have a more traditional design. These pastries will be similar to those on their current menu but with more innovative flavours.

“We want to attract local tourists in Penang and Johor, and even Singaporeans, with this new brand. It will be seen more as a collectible item. We may choose to sell these pastries in malls and shops,” says Wong.

“We want to keep innovating and trying new things,” says Fong. This could mean adding cheese or blueberries into some of their products, for instance.

They also plan to find a bigger factory to increase production volume and expand to more places. Already, they are fielding interest from various parties in Indonesia, Singapore, China and the Philippines, according to Wong. If they have a factory and certification, they will be able to export the products.

This is a point of pride for the team because the siew pao and kaya puff were invented in Malaysia. According to the Malaysian Chinese Museum, the siew pao was created by the Cantonese in Seremban, who repackaged unsold char siew filling for the steamed buns (char siew pao) and meat from siu mai (Chinese steamed dumplings) into the siew pao.

“People have contacted us about it. You cannot find siew pao in China or Hong Kong. In China, they have a similar version that is fried. But you can only find siew pao and kaya puffs here,” says Wong.

“When you eat our food, you are consuming a culture with more than 50 years of history that the family has kept alive through its sweat and tears.”

Mon Kee had to close its stores during the Movement Control Order (MCO) period. What was worse was that Pudu was a Covid-19 red zone for several weeks. Fortunately, the team managed to move their materials out of Pudu before the area was shut down. They also began offering online orders and delivery via Mon Kee’s Facebook page.

“We started to experiment with making bread and improving the products. One of our staff took photos of the products and posted them online, and our customers supported us. We thought about having an online platform before the MCO but did not properly plan for it. Now that we have tried it, we want to make it happen because we realise there is a market there,” says Wong.

The team also began advertising on social media to look for investors or anyone who is interested in becoming a licensee. “We realised that a lot of people had lost their jobs during the MCO or had to take a salary cut. But they still had a financial burden,” says Wong.

“This is an opportunity for them to run a small business and have additional income. If they have RM1 million, they can use it to invest and open two Mon Kee stores. We will teach them how to do it.”

Several of the company’s long-time employees took up this offer in the past. “We are very strict and only accept people who understand our culture. You must be able to commit and fully take charge of things,” he says.

“In the last decade, we have managed to get young people and professionals with degrees to join us in the business, which is a change from the past. To do this business, you need to have passion and appreciate the food we sell.

“We will teach them how to break even. We will also suggest that they do not rely on just retail customers. They need to know their customers and do catering for them [such as full moon celebrations or weddings]. Only then can the business be sustainable.”

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