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Sei Kee Café: Venture of three generations
keep their business for a long time, as rental prices are high and the whole environment is becoming very competitive. There is a small family-run coffee house, which has been in business for more than half a century since 1965, and today is operated by the grandson of the family. To start a business is difficult, but to keep it going is more difficult. This coffee house is doing something special.
Sei Kee Cafe, established 54 years ago as a coffee booth, provides light meals and drinks. Old and without air conditioning, the booth is located next to the walkway. The iconic things of the booth are long wooden chairs, wooden tables and some clay coffee pots. Till today, the booth is still in operation by a daughter of the founders. She is the second-generation owner of Sei Kee Cafe. The middle-age woman mentioned that most of the customers are neighbors. Because of the space limitation of the booth, they cannot provide a variety of food and a better environment. It is difficult to attract new customers.
Tea restaurants and coffee houses originated from Bing Sutt (cold drink house) are old-style eateries that appeared since 1960. The food culture of tea restaurants and coffee houses was influenced by British culture of afternoon tea combined with local flavors. The characteristics of tea restaurants are low prices, fast service, long opening hours and most importantly providing a cup of free tea for each customer.
Today some people may think that traditional tea restaurants are outdated, dirty and lack of choices. They are gradually replaced by Western-style cafes and other types of restaurants. Sei Kee Cafe is facing a similar situation. To avoid falling behind the times, Sei Kee Cafe wants to keep the tradition and introduce innovation at the same time.
Apart from the booth, Sei Kee Cafe opened two take-away shops in 2012 and a tea restaurant in 2017. The three shops are run by a member of the third generation of the founders, Alvin Au. Alvin started to take on the family business because he knew that his grandparents put a lot of effort into the booth. He wanted to keep the tradition and make some innovation at the same time to attract new customers and keep the business. As a young owner of the new shops, he had some ideas.
The first thing to do was to create a new brand image for Sei Kee. Similar to Starbucks, they designed a new colorful logo, which removed the traditional image of the coffee booth. They also made use of social media, such as Facebook and Instagram to do promotion, enabling more and more people to know about the shops.
Alvin also mentioned that he had changed the formula of coffee; the original taste of coffee was a little bit sour, so he made a little adjustment in order to satisfy young customers. In addition, he designed a new menu for the tea restaurant, which includes more varieties of food than the booth and take-away shops, such as macaroni and rice. However, the environment of the restaurant keeps the traditional style: check tile floor, marble tables, leather chairs and a "water bar".
The four different outlets of Sei Kee Cafe aim at different customers, the coffee booth for old and local customers, take-away shops for tourists and tea restaurant for young customers and white-collar workers. This traditional shop is continuing its business and serves local-style foods and drinks for us.