Nanyang Old Coffee
Visitors to Singapore can’t help but be impressed by the sleek, gleaming, modern and efficient city state. Here you’ll find shopping and dining which is as sophisticated as anywhere in the world. All the “name” brands are represented including many fast food franchises and retailing franchises from the west, but some tourists may wonder, where is the “Old Singapore”?
Traditional Coffee Shop
Much of it has gone to make way for the new, but fortunately there are pockets of pre-war shop-houses which now have National Heritage status.
Singapore is famous for its food and the dishes which are popular in the SE Asian region don’t need any protection measures from any official body, they will be around for generations to come.
Singapore’s food is a potpourri (Singaporeans would say “rojak”) of styles showing influences from the Middle East, India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Indochina and of course China. Often fiery ”chili-hot” but always flavorsome, some of the dishes need to be approached with caution.
The once common coffee shop where in the past people would gather for a quick breakfast early in the morning, or a leisurely chat during the evening still exist, and are popular with the locals, but their numbers have diminished and most people now visit a coffee stall in one of the hundreds of “hawker centers” which can be found everywhere in Singapore.
Hawker centers can represent a bit bit of a culture shock to the overseas visitor for here the normally high standards of hygiene slip a little and each stall is usually a cluttered untidy affair, but still they are great places to sit and people-watch while in the background the time-honored traditions of grinding the beans and pouring boiling water through a fabric filter holding the coffee take place continuously.
Nanyang Old Coffee Franchise
There is a new company which is setting out to change the look of hawker stalls and it is a franchise. Nanyang Old Coffee taps into the nostalgic yearnings many Singaporeans feel for the old style coffee shop while appealing to the younger generation who demand sophistication and style.
The stalls are beautifully fitted out, the coffee is from the finest Arabica beans and it is still made the traditional Singapore way, by pouring boiling water from a tall metal jug through a fabric filter. Traditional kaya toast and and boiled eggs are available for breakfast.
Although a new franchise, there are already half a dozen outlets throughout Singapore with more planned to open in the coming months. It will be interesting to see how these beautifully designed stalls will influence the other stall holders. I suspect many will rise to the challenge and the resulting race can only be a good thing and will improve the image of Singapore’s hawker centers.
To me it is another example of how the franchising industry often spearheads improving standards in many industries
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Reader Comments
Is it just me or has franchising really become popular in Singapore and across Asia?
Really popular. Asian government are actively encouraging franchises. Broadly speaking, they are happy for overseas franchises to come into their own markets and show the others “how it is done”. They like the discipline, the branding, the accountability and the competition that franchising brings to an industry.
And while they are happy to see foreign franchises come in, they are also fairly aggressively encouraging any of their promising local brands to expand by using the franchising mechanism.
So while in the short-term some may accuse the franchising industry as being just another way for the West to export their culture globally, in the long-term there will be two way traffic.
It is mostly a good thing, I think, apart from the very real concerns about how the typical Western diet has changed very much for the worse in recent years. I’ve read that this may be the first generation in history to have a shorter lifespan than their parents.
The business principles of bringing western franchises to Asia makes sense to me I just am shocked that Asian governments aren’t concerned about the loss of their own culture by developing western franchises. And of course food still dominates the franchise world and for the most part franchise food is not healthy. I am shocked that ‘this may be the first generation in history tohave a shorter lifespan than their parents.’ That’s really alarming.