I came to the UK, at the beginning of this century, carrying a hope for a new life. This turns out to be my new life of the dream and fantasy. After moving over to a completely new environment, I had to rethink how my family can fit into this new living environment.

While thinking of home, I think of my grandmother, a very hard working old woman. Every morning even before the sun rise, she will use her own pair of hands to produce all kinds of steamed and fried buns. She will then sell them at street corner to earn a living for the family. Wherever her stalls are position, the fragrance and the smell of the buns will attracts passerby to buy. This smell lingers in my youth and accompanied me while I grow up.

At times, I try to imitate my grandmother, making a variety of steam buns and practice on baking cake. With my husband and children tasting these cakes, it eases my melancholy of homesickness. The appreciation of my husband and my little girl makes me happy and I often bring those buns and cakes to friends and relatives to let them share my joy and happiness. Through the recognition and encouragement from my friends and relatives, they aroused my thoughts: This should be my way to go in my newly settled country! Steamed buns and baking cakes business will give me a firm base to live in UK.

In 2005, with the support of my husband, we began the kitchen renovation in our home with an extension and the purchase of some simple bakery equipment. This begins my road to making steam and fried buns as a living. As one said, the beginning of a business is the most hardest. Everything is difficult to start, difficult to understand and difficult to implement. We often start from dawn to explore, study, experiment and test. Sometimes we do not even have time to take care of our ever day household chores.

After numerous sleepless nights, countless failures and grievances, we fell over many times. But with the enthusiastic support of our relatives and friends and their intimate advice, we time and again get ourselves stand up to face the challenge again. We believe in the proverb that “persevere and you will succeed”. So after short period of trials and errors, our product gradually won the trust and love of the general overseas Chinese around the area.

The initial success has made us realise that we must formalise our business and must produce more quality, healthier and more diversified products. We aim to strive for acceptance from our compatriots, Vietnamese, other Southeast Asian, and even from our local residents.

I spent a few years of my savings to fund an expedition back to Mainland China. North from Shandong, through to Shanghai, south via Guangdong and Guangxi, I visit friends and relatives, hoping that I can quickly grasp the characteristics of all the steamed buns from around to meet my customer’s requirement.

 

With the help of our beloved friends and relatives, we managed to find in a small town a rather dilapidated commercial unit with residence above the shop. We then from scratch built a government food standard approved bakery workshop. We then purchased and imported all our equipment from Mainland China which comprise of a whole set of steaming, frying, and baking equipment. We design our own brand name and call it: “Hometown cake house” (La – LUSCIOUS BAKERY). In order to achieve good quality product, we have meticulously select quality ingredients, strictly control the operation, configuration, style, taste, packaging and other procedures, to gain a fresh and healthy, but cheap food reputation. Eventually we succeed and were awarded the five-star certificate from the local government THURROCK COUNCIL FOOD STANDARDS AGENCY.

Our efforts are now being paid off. “Hometown cake house” (La – LUSCIOUS BAKERY) means quality, healthy, fresh, beautifully packaged all kinds of steamed, baked goods, fried food. We are also able to produce birthday cakes with a variety of styles to suit all ages. Every day, my husband will deliver these products to restaurants and take-away shops, some Chinese community and most Chinese schools. Their recognition and welcome of La-LUSCIOUS BAKERY has encouraged us both and strengthened our confidence in running the business. In order to better serve our customers, we hired experienced master baker to bake more quality, healthier and beautiful cakes of all kinds.

This year on 10th October, our newly decorated shops officially opened. From now on, this small beautiful bakery, located in the suburbs of London, a small town on the banks of the Thames will now starts to serve our customer. All our compatriots from all over the country, from Vietnam and Southeast Asia and other native British residents, will now follows their sense and smell, and converge to this elegant “Hometown cake house”.