Old Chang Kee stall in the ’50s vs its flagship coffee house at Rex today./ Image Credit: Old Chang Kee
As the organisers of the Singapore Innovation and Manufacturing Excellence Awards (SIMEA) 2026, we believe that true excellence isn’t just about constant success—it’s about the resilience to learn from setbacks.
Selecting an overall winner requires looking beyond just a “popular brand.” We look for a legacy of quality, manufacturing resilience, and the ability to turn lessons into growth. Old Chang Kee embodies all three.
The 1990s: A lesson in over-expansion
The Vulcan Post highlighted a pivotal chapter in Old Chang Kee’s history: their rapid, aggressive push into international markets between 1993 and 1997. During this time, the brand franchised into eight countries, including Japan, India, and even South Africa.
While the numbers were initially impressive—with sales in Malaysia and Indonesia alone hitting S$1 million by 1994—the strategy ultimately proved unsustainable. By 2002, the overseas outlets had eventually become unprofitable. Han made the decision to terminate all 24 franchises, incurring losses of around S$50,000.
Old Chang Kee’s London outlet./ Image Credit: Tripadvisor
The pivot to “smarter expansion”
What makes Old Chang Kee our 2026 winner is how they transformed that failure into a competitive advantage. They reentered the international market in 2005 and employed a much more calculated strategy:
Protecting the legacy in 2026
In a recent feature by The Business Times, CFO Song Yeow Chung shared that the company’s “secret sauce” is now locked in a hidden vault. “We really want to protect this recipe. It’s from this recipe that we have been able to branch out into other secondary products,” said Old Chang Kee’s chief financial officer Song Yeow Chung.
Congratulations to Old Chang Kee for showing Singapore that true excellence is the result of constant evolution and the courage to start again.
