Kwan Kee Store
Staring as an illegal street vendor bearing a pole and two
bushels hawking fluffy cakes, white sugar cakes and fried
sweet dough balls in the past, to being now a specialty
cake shop often showcased by television, magazines, and
even the Tourism Bureau, as makers of authentic local
traditional cakes, Kwan Kee Store holds its fort in Sham
Shui Po, and sells cakes costing only a few dollars day
in and day out.
They have small bowl cakes, white sugar
cakes, yellow sugar cakes, fluffy cakes, “Cha Guos” (glutinous
rice dumplings, each steamed on a leaf), ritual cakes
and other delicacies used by worshippers as offerings.
They make these authentic and simple sweet delicacies
over the last ten years to serve the neighbourhood folks
and also tourists who seek them out for their fame. It is a
family-run business, and their so-called “workshop” is on
the 9th floor of the building next to their home.
They said “In the 1960s and 1970s, shops do not makes
deliveries to us if we were on the 9th floor, so we had to
carry bags and bags of rice by ourselves up to the ninth
level, with each bag weighing one picul (61 kg)! After the
cakes were steamed, we have to bring them downstairs
again.” Kwan Kee insists on having one and only one shop,
opening no other branches, since the most important thing
is to maintain the highest quality.
