Gourmands who have dined at Singapore’s Michelin-starred Chinese restaurants, or at its popular Chinese food chains, are likely to have tasted Kwong Cheong Thye’s soya sauce.
The business has since expanded into manufacturing chilli sauce, sesame oil, oyster sauce and more. Its product range also includes noodles, dim sum skin, mooncakes and food pastes such as chilli crab, laksa and Hainanese chicken rice. Choo formally joined the family business straight after completing his National Service . His older sister helms the administration department, while his younger brother looks after operations. Choo, on the other hand, takes care of product development and marketing.
Priorities for the fifth generation, Choo continued, are automation, digitalisation and product innovation. The company recently expanded its single storey production facility in Senoko into a five-storey building, with state-of-the-art machinery for every stage of the soya sauce making process, including packaging. The rationale is two-fold – first, to improve productivity and second, to meet the demands of local and global customers.
While the business has been traditionally B2B, Choo wants to reach out to more consumers. He spearheaded the launch of KCT’s social media platforms on Facebook, Instagram and even TikTok as a way of engaging a new generation of customers. “We have to move with the times in how we market to people,” Choo said. “We can no longer say that our target audience is housewives from the older generation.