Social Entrepreneurship Forum » Inclusive Markets

Recipe to Success

Andrew Wang — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 16:34:26 +0000

What is the secret recipe to Gingko’s success?

We were losing money every month for the first three months when we first begun, but we persevered and tried to do some publicity. We then managed to get some media to cover our story and let the public know of our social mission. From then on, many came to support us.

But we never forgot our main objective, which is food. We hired a very good chef to ensure that the quality of the food is good. And we are always testing the food, adjusting pricing and style to suit our customers. At first when customers came, they came out of compassion. But after tasting our food, they said that the food is good enough to make us come again. Customers only support you once. After that, you have to take care of the main job, which really is all about the food.

We also decided western food, a fusion of French and Italian fine (and slow) dining, is the way to go. This allows our seniors to work at a more relaxed pace. Our customers appreciate that as they get to chat more with the seniors and have a leisurely dining experience.

When we first started out in HK, about six years ago, the awareness of aging issues was not as recognized as today. These days, there are more awareness and more work-integration social enterprises working with seniors.

Why F&B then?

F&B is easier for most elderly to catch up and to learn if they are willing to do so. For other things, there is a longer learning curve.

We know that F&B is very competitive, but we had the right partners, a chef and a manager who are very experienced. So with good quality products and good quality service, there is less worry about filling 100 seats.

Who are the seniors that join Gingko?

Different people join for different reasons, and they come from different backgrounds. Some have financially difficulties. One old lady wanted to earn some money to support her granddaughter to go to a university in mainland. We raised her wages so that she does not have to keep long hours at work. But she was very determined and said: “I need to work longer even though you raise my wages… As long as I can work, I need to support my granddaughter”.

Others join us because after they retire, they have no role to play at work or at home. And Gingko House allows for a positive work environment for seniors to meet people and to find something worthwhile to do.

One of our elderly used to be a communicator onboard the ship and he is multi-lingual. He speaks Japanese and French. Once, a French tourist came and said, “Your shop is so small, but you have someone that can speak French”! This is the unique kind of experience that our seniors bring.

We have many applicants who demonstrate their willingness to work. And as long as they are able to do the work, have a good attitude and can co-operate well with others, we invite them to join us at Gingko.

Of course there are also cases when we had to turn away people, there was one case when the cook was very loud, abrasive and would shout rude words, which affected the dining experience, so we had to ask him to leave.

Could you tell us more about Gingko’s operations?

We have about 25 seniors working in shifts of five to six hours and the average age is about 65 to 68. The youngest is 62 and 3 of them are over 74 years of age.

Shifts are kept short so that it does not strain the seniors too much and so that they can enjoy their job while maintaining their income. In Hong Kong, the pension is not enough for them to last through their golden years. Our seniors are paid more than some of the larger restaurants. And we tell them we know not everyone welcomes this type of job, but don’t look down yourself, we respect you, and if you respect yourself, other people will look at you differently too.

However, there is a need to recognise limitations. We mix our staff with younger people needed for strenuous work like carrying things up and down the stairs. We believe that each person has something different to offer and the job must be suitably matched.

What led you to set up your own business?

Before Gingko my partner and I were social workers working with seniors and we have set up a private home for seniors in 1998. It was also near my retirement age and we knew the senior citizens’ homes market well. We realise there was a market gap then, where there was no quality care provided at the homes. Eight seniors would be squeezed in a small room and there was no proper licensing system before 1998.

Gingko is definitely more difficult to set up, as you have to keep a constant eye on the operations. The profit is less stable than that of the senior citizens’ home and is also sensitive to the market. So we are always working very hard to see how food prepared and received by our customers. There is also a weekly change of menu.

What are Ginko’s other plans?

We are always thinking how we can get more people to join us especially when we have now opened our third outlet. We are not afraid to change our business model and products to suit our seniors. Like in the case of the third outlet, we serve double-boiled soup and Chinese dishes. This is more familiar to them and they can explain it easily to people. There is also no need to remember the French names of the dishes as in the other restaurants.

But there is still a long way to go. The baby boomers are getting older as time passes so the market for elder care services and the group of senior workers is growing very quickly.

The seniors are very valuable assets in society as they are so experienced. They can attract many customers; some can share with the customer about how to drink wine and their own life experiences. There is a lot of charisma and many things to chat about. This keeps the friendly atmosphere at our restaurants.

We hope more and more people will realize the valuable experience that elders bring as active market participants.

Tale of 3 enterprises in HK

Elaine Ng — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 16:08:53 +0000

Terence Yuen is a lecturer at the Community College of City University in Hong Kong, and an avid observer of the Social Entrepreneurship movement in Hong Kong. In 2007, Terence’s research culminated in a comparative study of three cities – Hong Kong, Singapore and Taipei that was presented at the SEforum 2007. We catch up with Terence in Hong Kong as he shares with us his thoughts on Hong Kong’s SE development.

Some people may consider the three Social enterprises (SE) that I present here as “outliers”. True, they are hardly profiled, but in my opinion they characterise the potential for social entrepreneurship in Hong Kong (HK).

Unlike HK’s SE stratum which is dominated by mostly work-integration social enterprises that are largely encouraged by preferential government policy; these three SEs are driven by young social entrepreneurs who identified a market gap, felt deeply uneasy about the social situation they saw, and undertook it upon themselves to try to make a difference. In doing so, they challenge existing norms; work against existing practices, and set in motion new social and cultural norms.

1. Non-Profit-Making Veterinary Services Society Ltd (NPVSS)

Humans are not the only one that deserves proper medical care.

Founder Mark Mak wanted to bring quality veterinary services within everyone’s means. He felt frustrated by the fact that many pets and their owners could not afford basic veterinary services because of the unreasonably high prices of existing animal clinics. Hence, Mark set up NPVSS in 2006 and is now running two clinics, with throngs of pet owners lining up for the pet-doctor.

A “cost plus” pricing principle is adopted by NPVSS to ensure affordable pet care, which simply means adding only a reasonable mark-up to the actual cost of services and not to “overcharge” the pet owners to maximise profits.

On top of this, NPVSS would also offer special discounts to pet owners who are social security recipients. Instead of submitting to the view that the poor and disadvantaged should not be pet owners, NPVSS recognizes that pets are sometimes the most important companions for the socially disadvantaged especially the singleton elderly who chose to have pets for company.

2. Social Ventures Hong Kong (SVHK)

Modelled after successful venture philanthropy institutions (VPI) in other parts of the world, SVHK aims to provide financial, intellectual, and human capital support to the development of social entrepreneurship in HK. As a pioneer of venture philanthropy, one of the unique features of SVHK is its ability to blend the talents of committed young professionals and the visions of social entrepreneurs by using a high-engagement approach to create social impact across many service realms.

SVHK is a platform serving four key groups of stakeholders: visionary social investors, social entrepreneurs, engaged professionals, and devoted citizens. In the case of engaged professionals they are the knowledge volunteers and for sure, a key success factor. But instead of replicating the Social Venture Partners model from the US that emphasizes on support via the professional volunteers/social investors, the working platform of SVHK is wider and goes beyond professional volunteering.

Since its inception in late 2007, SVHK has already registered thousands of volunteer hours from its committed young members in supporting SE projects that may or may not be SVHK’s direct investees.

With over 3 years of experience, SVHK aims to gradually enlarge its SE investment portfolio. This includes Fullness Hair Salon, arguably the most successful work-integration social enterprise in HK, and Dialogue in the Dark (Did), another SE that belies great potential.

In the cases of Fullness and DiD, SVHK had their members appointed as Board members to the two SEs and playing very influential roles. For example, the SVHK appointed board member to DiD is from Disney HK and brings in a lot of experience in helping DiD set up its facility as well as run its programmes.

By testing out new ways of combining financial and social resources to tackle complicated social problems, SVHK is practicing social entrepreneurship in its core operations.

3. CNEX Foundation (CNEX)

CNEX is the short form of “Chinese Next” and pronounced as “See Next”, which is an apt name for the motto of CNEX: “Looking for Chinese 2.0”.

CNEX came into existence in 2007 with the aim of promoting the production of documentaries related to the Chinese people. Firmly believing in the power of empathy, founder Ben Tsiang is determined to make CNEX the vehicle for people from within and beyond the Greater China region – in particular, the next generation of Chinese people [aka Chinese 2.0] – to better understand contemporary Chinese societies through documentary films.

CNEX also strives to facilitate the cultural exchange between the Chinese and the rest of the world by supporting documentaries depicting contemporary Chinese – people of Chinese ethnicity, their lives and their society. With the mission of producing 100 documentary films about China’s society change over the course of ten years, CNEX works towards its aim of establishing and developing a library of global Chinese non-fiction work, as well as to enable a sustainable strategy for the contemporary Chinese documentary making.

Founder of CNEX Ben Tisang is originally from Taiwan and is a successful IT entrepreneur. He co-founded the popular Internet search engine Sina.com and has a good grasp of the deep cultural diversity across Chinese societies.

Since CNEX was set up five years ago, 15 documentaries have been produced for the last two seasons so far.

Here are two such impactful films:

All’s Right is about poverty in HK and throughout the past two years it was screened more than 100 times in the campuses pf local universities, in community centres or NGO offices in various neighourhoods. A local NGO working on poverty issues even used the film to develop a teaching kit for the use of secondary students.

As for KJ, a biography of a talented pianist, it addresses a wide range of issues. For one, parents putting their kids to learning instruments merely for the sake of getting the certificates. Of course there are the main issues about the meaning of life, of growing up, the love between father and son and more. Through Facebook viral marketing, the film has broken the box office record for documentaries in HK. The film recently won three prizes in the prestigious Golden Horse Award in Taiwan.

VillageWorks Songkhem Collection

Elaine Ng — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 04:02:11 +0000

“When people buy in Singapore, lives are improved in villages in Cambodia,” said Susan Lee, who runs Beyond Imagination’s (BI) retail outlet at the Girls’ Brigade Headquarters in Singapore. Beyond Imagination is the sole distributor for VillageWorks products in Singapore.

Post Khmer Rouge communist rule, thousands of Cambodian farming villages started producing and selling their traditional handicrafts such as bags, pouches, lacquerware and more. Many of them leave their farms to capitalize on the booming trade.

Later, however, some of the artisans find themselves exploited by middlemen who take a large portion of the profits, only to leave a meagre portion for themselves.

But things have changed for at least the group of artisans at VillageWorks SongKhem in Cambodia, which is interestingly situated opposite the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, the historical museum memorializing the horrors of the cruel Khmer Rouge rule in which more than two million Cambodians were killed – a moment of death and despair in Cambodia’s recent history. By choosing to be based right opposite the museum, VillageWorks (VW) stands perhaps as a defiant act of hope and healing in the midst of past despair.

There at the centre, the artisans sell their crafts to Beyond Imagination (BI) which acts as a trustworthy transparent middleman. BI is a non-profit social enterprise set up in 2003 by a small group of dedicated Girls’ Brigade officers to establish and develop an export market in Singapore and Asia for the sale of products from VillageWorks, which is also an initiative by Girls’ Brigade. Through Beyond Imagination, they hope to begin a sustainable effort in improving the lives of the socially and economically disadvantaged female villagers in Cambodia.

Buying products, giving hope

Peach Chheam, 49, is a VillageWorks artisan.

Everyday she has to cycle 12 kilometres across bumpy roads to work at the VillageWorks Songkhem centre but since she begun her artisan work three years ago, her life is “full of hope, joy and peace”.

She is one of the 60 artisans trained by VillageWorks, which teaches a group of female Cambodian villagers skills to create traditional handicrafts such as bags and pouches. From when the social enterprise begun eight years ago, the number of craftswomen has now grown to 14 full-timers and 60 artisans. Most artisans are women – many who are widows – and the rest, men who have physical disabilities.

Since her husband died 20 years ago, Peach had to work day and night to singlehandedly bring up her seven children. When food ran out for her family, she sold her only small plot of land and worked for a farmer just to earn 1kilogram of rice a day. The situation worsened when she fell sick due to malnourishment.

“Three years ago, I started working for Songkhem in Baray District. Things then improved greatly. I have money to buy food for all in the family and send my children to school. And when there is enough work at Songkhem, I can even have some money to save and buy back my land,” Peach said.

Songkhem means ‘hope’ in Khmer, the Cambodian national language. And hope is what villagers like Peach receive.

Sustaining hope

But besides teaching the villagers sustainable and marketable skills and hence giving them an alternative source of income, they are also encouraged to learn and develop skills in quality control, design and business management so that they may eventually run their own businesses.

Norm Bunnak, a local who manages the business and quality standards of the VillageWorks Songkhem products, is grateful for the learning experience.

“Through working for VillageWorks Songkhem, I think I have learnt what school cannot teach and I am extremely grateful for the experience. At the same time, I see people working around me have their lives improved too,” Norm, more affectionately know as ‘Anak’, said.

She added that she now leaves the artisans, who take great pride in their handicrafts, to do quality checks on their own.

These artisans are called “Shining Eyes” at the VillageWorks Songkhem centre as they take a great sense of pride and ownership of their own crafts. Also, as the artisans are paid by piece, they can work at their own pace and comfort level. Naturally, they are highly motivated.

“This is essential”, said Susan, “Running a social enterprise is not the same as running a charity or a business. The products have to sell before the cause and have to be priced competitively while ensuring fair trade standards. So, efficiency is an important factor here.”

To find out more about Beyond Imagination or VillageWorks, you can visit their website at http://www.villageworks.com/.