LOS ANGELES: “Stop asking your relatives to smuggle laksa in their luggage.”
That is the cheeky advertising tagline for Singapore Hawker Haven, a company freezing packets of laksa, mee pok and fishballs – all made by hawkers in Singapore – and selling them in Australia.
Founder Jameson Wong, a Singaporean who moved to Melbourne in 2022, launched the business two years later after a midnight craving for mee pok, one of Singapore’s signature noodle dishes.
His products are now stocked at more than 80 supermarkets and grocery stores in Australia, and can also be ordered online for A$11.99 (USS$8.45) to A$13.99 each.
From June, they will be available in the United States as well.
And while most of his US customers will likely be Singaporean, South-East Asian or Chinese, as they are in Australia, Wong’s ambitions stretch beyond this market, with the goal of making Singapore hawker food as globally recognisable as ramen or pad thai.
The 37-year-old shares his plans while on a long delivery run between Melbourne and Canberra.
He is making a 16-hour round trip by car so he can personally deliver orders to eight Singaporeans in Canberra, where demand is not yet high enough to support a retail stockist.
“But we still try to serve the Singapore diaspora, so we consolidate orders and do a big drive every five to six months,” he says over the phone.
Wong, who previously worked as a senior travel executive in Singapore and had no prior experience in the food industry, lives in Melbourne with his 38-year-old Singaporean wife, who works in advertising, and their three children aged one to seven.
“We felt like Melbourne might be a better place to raise young kids,” he says.
But as much as they love their new home, in the winter of July 2023, he found himself cold and hungry in bed late one night.
Read Full Article At Source
