Local business exit example: Lana Cake’s Violet Kwan, 88, is retiring (24 Feb 2016) Retrieved on 13

Jan 2023 from StraitsTimes.com

http://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/food/lana-cakes-baker-is-retiring

After 50 years of selling her famous chocolate cake, Mrs Violet Kwan of Lana Cake Shop wants to call
it a day and is looking for a successor.

The 88-year-old mother of two says she is getting on in years and is looking to sell the business,
which will include her recipes and the shop at 36 Greenwood Avenue.

Generations of Singaporeans have grown up eating her moist chocolate cake, blanketed by thick,
shiny fudge. She sells about 100 cakes a day, mostly chocolate ones.

"It is too much for me, I need to take a break," she says.

However, she would like to find "the right person" to take over the business, for the sake of her
long-time customers.

"It must be someone who really values the cake, who knows how to bake and is not just looking for a
business opportunity," she says. "I hope he will take Lana Cake to greater heights."

She will not discuss a selling price, but her daughter Jennifer, 53, says the shop is valued at $4
million. Inquiries should be directed to violetlanacakes@gmail.com.

Mrs Kwan adds that customers who started buying cakes for their babies' one-month birthday have
become loyal fans whose children and grandchildren are also customers.

The shop is closed on Sundays and Mondays, but she still bakes on the other days, working from
10.30am till 1pm and then resuming after lunch. She is sprightly and drives herself to the shop from
her home nearby.

She started selling the cakes in 1964.

Her sister-in-law Lani, who was visiting from Honolulu where she lived, baked cakes she had learnt
while working in a bakery there and took them to friends who had invited her to their homes.

The friends loved them and Lani hit on the idea of teaching Mrs Kwan how to make the cakes so her
friends could order them after she returned to Hawaii. So Mrs Kwan learnt to make orange chiffon
cake, blueberry cake and the chocolate fudge cake and sold them from her Serangoon Garden home.

Initially, the orange chiffon cake was the most popular, but the chocolate one soon became the
bestseller. A small cake cost $15 when she started selling it and an 800g one, with more chocolate
fudge, now costs $42.

She moved to the Hillcrest area and in 1975, opened her shop at Greenwood Avenue.

Although she expanded her cake range to include fruit, mocha, carrot and date cakes, the chocolate
one is still the most popular.

"I was just a housewife when I started the business," she says. "I did not expect the cakes to become
so popular."

That popularity has not dimmed. There was a steady stream of customers in the shop yesterday
afternoon when The Straits Times visited.
At Christmas last year, one corporate order alone amounted to 450 cakes. She had to split delivery
over several days because the cakes are still baked in small batches and frosted by hand.

Her customers are not thrilled about her wanting to give the business up.

She said: "They ask me, 'What about us?' I've told them not to worry, that I will train the person who
takes over to make it as good as I do, if not better. It can be done."

Over the years, her cake has spawned a slew of copycats. She has also fielded offers to open more
shops or to franchise her business.

She turned them all down. "If you have other shops, you have to get other people to make the cake
and it may not be the same. You cannot control the quality," she says.

Her chocolate cake is a taste of nostalgia for many Singaporeans.

Mr Daniel Chia, 46, president of Slow Food (Singapore) and a lecturer in culinary and catering
management in Temasek Polytechnic, says: "I have fond memories of enjoying Lana's chocolate cake
growing up in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

"Uniquely rich and moist, it was a rare treat which sometimes appeared on special occasions. What
made it 'more special' was the knowledge that you couldn't just walk into the shop and buy a cake.
You had to order one in advance."

Slow Food (Singapore) named Lana Cake Shop a Heritage Hero in 2014 and last year, for contributing
to the "preservation of Singapore's Food Cultural Heritage".

Lawyer Genevieve Tan-McCully, 53, adds: "It's old-fashioned comfort food."

She remembers being in the shop one year, about two weeks before Christmas. A customer walked
in and asked to order a cake for Christmas.

"She was asked, 'You mean this Christmas?' They have such a good sense of humour."