How Singapore's Bengawan Solo conquered Southeast Asia
Anastasia Liew arrived in Singapore in the 70s with a suitcase, a little bit of English, and a passion for baking. Fast forward 40 years and she's the owner of one of Southeast Asia most loved brands, Bengawan Solo.
Singapore Pride: Bengawan Solo
Bengawan Solo started out of a housewife's kitchen in a 4-room HDB flat in 1979. 40 years later, Mrs Anastasia Tjendri-Liew's home business now has 44 outlets across Singapore.
A Slice Of Life At Bengawan Solo
From their renowned fluffy pandan chiffon cake to their handmade ondeh ondeh filled with decadent gula java, most Singaporeans grew up with kuehs and cakes from Bengawan Solo. Get a slice of life in their kitchen and find out how — even after 42 years — they still continue to maintain a high quality with their products, handmade locally in Singapore!
Bengawan Solo
Bengawan Solo Cake Shop opens as a small neighbourhood corner store in Marine Terrace in 1979
The first Bengawan Solo Cake Shop was a small neighbourhood corner store on the east coast of Singapore, where cakes, kueh (traditional local confectionery) and other sweet confections were lovingly prepared to perfection in the modest back kitchen of Mrs Anastasia Liew. Named after a famous song that Mrs Liew loved about Solo River (Bengawan being an old Javanese word for river), Bengawan Solo Singapore has grown to become an established Singaporean brand synonymous with premium quality cakes and confectionery.
Now, more than 40 years later, this same homemade quality is maintained as each confection is still prepared in the traditional manner, using only the finest and freshest ingredients with absolutely no artificial preservatives. This passion and commitment to great taste, quality and freshness has made Bengawan Solo Singapore a household brand name locally and a firm favourite with overseas visitors looking for a uniquely Singaporean premium food gift. Signature items include Pandan Chiffon Cake, called Singapore's National Cake by CNN in 2017, perhaps the widest range of kueh in Singapore including Lapis Sagu, Ondeh Ondeh, Kueh Salat, and Asian Specialty Cakes such as Kueh Lapis, confectionaries such as Pineapple Tarts, and a wide range of sweet and savoury cookies such as Macadamia Sugee Cookies and Kueh Bangkit (Coconut Cookies).
We aim to establish Bengawan Solo Singapore in the region and the world as a uniquely Singaporean culinary experience and share our passion for lovingly prepared food without compromising on the principles or quality that define Bengawan Solo Singapore. Since the opening of the first Bengawan Solo Cake Shop in 1979, we have become synonymous with premium quality cakes, kueh, cookies and other delicacies. We pride ourselves on continuing the tradition of using only the finest and freshest ingredients in the preparation of all our items and no expense is spared in ensuring that every delicate little morsel is a culinary delight.
Bengawan Solo - An Inside Look
There is an old school Bengawan Solo shop in my Marine Terrace neighbourhood that is just different from the rest that are located in the malls. Someone told me that is the very first outlet, so they have always kept it.
And recently, my friend Joanna introduced me to the Liew family that owns Bengawan Solo, and they confirmed the story. Bengawan Solo opened here in 1979, which makes them as old as Red Star Restaurant down at Chin Swee Road. The founder Anastasia Liew, now in her 60s, still runs the business with tremendous passion, energy and attention to detail. Her son, Henry Liew, is also working with her, as are five other family members.
Now Singaporeans are all very familiar with the brand and the kuehs, cakes and cookies they make. These are so readily available (44 outlets all over Singapore), and so uniformly consistent, that we sometimes tend to dismiss them as "mass-produced" goods. But did you know that some of the items are still handmade? Yes, there is a central factory up in Woodlands, supplying the outlets. But as the Liews showed us, it's not all machines at work, because there are some things machines just cannot do. And they refuse to compromise the quality of the products, so some things are still painstakingly done by hand.
Bengawan Solo
Bengawan Solo is one of Singapore’s most successful bakery chains, having built its reputation on the quality of its popular nonya (Peranakan)-style cakes and pastries. Founded by Anastasia Tjendri-Liew in 1979, the company has grown from a single shop to a chain of over 40 outlets. In 1970, Indonesia-Chinese Tjendri-Liew moved from Palembang, Indonesia, to Singapore. She turned her keen interest in baking and cooking into a home business two years later by producing butter and chiffon cakes from the kitchen of her flat in Marine Parade. Tjendri-Liew’s products proved to be so popular that she eventually started supplying them to shops.
However, she did not have a food-manufacturing licence, and was told by government officials to shut down the home operation in 1979. The demand for her products continued nonetheless and a few months later, Tjendri-Liew opened a shop at Marine Terrace. As the previous tenants had not done well, she managed to obtain a low rent of S$1,200 and named the shop Bengawan Solo after an Indonesian folk song.6 Her cakes and traditional Southeast Asian snacks (referred to as kueh in Malay) remained popular, with demand increasing significantly after a positive newspaper review. Customers urged Tjendri-Liew to set up a second shop in a more central location, and a second outlet at the Centrepoint shopping mall on Orchard Road opened in 1983. By 1987, the company had five outlets and required a central kitchen, which was opened on a 9,500-square-foot plot on Harvey Road. Bengawan Solo’s utilisation of a central kitchen was a first for Singapore’s confectionery industry, and the move drew much media attention, as well as paved the way for other bakeries to do likewise. Having grown to 25 outlets by 1997, Bengawan Solo shifted central kitchen operations to a larger, S$6-million factory in Woodlands. A second factory in Woodlands was added in 2009 at a cost of S$5.2 million to double the company’s production capacity. As Bengawan Solo’s production increased, its business also continued to thrive. In 2000, the company’s turnover was close to S$30 million. By 2002, this figure had grown to S$36 million. The bakery had also been registering healthy profits over the past decade, with profits growing from about S$6.2 million in 2002 to S$12.3 million in 2013, allowing the company to clinch that year’s Singapore SME 1000 Net Profit Excellence Award.
Bengawan Solo’s rise was reflected by its entry into the Enterprise 50 list of Singapore’s top privately held companies. In 1998, the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises named Tjendri-Liew the first recipient of the Woman Entrepreneur of the Year award. According to Tjendri-Liew, over the years Bengawan Solo has attracted offers to buy out the business, but she has declined all bids as Bengawan Solo was her “baby”. Her husband, Johnson Liew, joined Bengawan Solo as the company’s accounts director in the early stages of its development. After 2000, their son Henry also joined the company. His vision for the company included expanding the business overseas and developing it into an international brand, improving production and operations, and introducing promotions such as cake vouchers, while maintaining Bengawan Solo’s traditional customer base. Plans to expand Bengawan Solo overseas have been discussed since 2003, but the company preferred to take its time to research markets, think through production issues and quality control, and test responses at overseas trade fairs. With the majority of its customers at Singapore stores comprising tourists, particularly those from Hong Kong, Japan and Malaysia, Bengawan Solo is focusing on these countries for its first steps abroad. The Liew family has expressed its desire for Bengawan Solo to become an internationally renowned brand while remaining a privately held family business.
Singapore Women's Hall of Fame: Anastasia Tjendri-Liew
Founder of one of Singapore’s most successful bakery chains
Anastasia Tjendri-Liew’s interest in food was evident when she was a child. Instead of taking the bus, she sometimes walked to school so that she could use her bus fare to buy food. Her favourites were fried noodles and pempek, a fishcake delicacy of Palembang, the Indonesian city where she grew up. But while she enjoyed learning how to cook in her mother’s kitchen, Anastasia’s childhood dream was to be a pharmacist. Little did she know that she would one day start a bakery business that would become one of Singapore’s most successful bakery chains. Born on Bangka Island, Indonesia, in 1947, Anastasia was the third of eight children and grew up in Palembang where her father ran a provision shop while her mother was a homemaker. After she completed secondary school, she did a six-month baking and cooking course to hone the culinary skills she had picked up from her mother and aunt. She then ran small cooking classes at the family home. She was such an effective teacher that more and more people signed up for her classes. The additional income meant she could buy the freshest ingredients, and she experimented with new recipes and improved old ones.
In 1970, Anastasia came to Singapore to improve her English. Here she met and married Johnson Liew, whose family had moved to Singapore from Indonesia when he was five years old. They had two children and Anastasia settled into domestic life in their Marine Parade flat. But she was a woman born to bake, and soon she was making butter and chiffon cakes and kueh lapis, selling them to friends. These friends told their friends, and before long she was supplying her products to shops and supermarkets. Then, in 1979, health inspectors told her she could not continue her business from her home kitchen without a food manufacturing licence. She had not realised that she needed a licence, and she immediately stopped baking. But her customers kept asking for her cakes and kueh, so in 1979 she opened a shop in Marine Terrace. She named it Bengawan Solo, after the popular Indonesian folk song about Indonesia’s Solo River. In an interview in 2013, Anastasia described the early days of her business: “I had only a small domestic oven, small mixers. I had to do everything myself. I made everything by hand. I did not cut corners; I used only the best and freshest ingredients.” She concentrated on improving her products, adjusting recipes and baking methods to achieve the best possible taste and texture, and her customers loved what she produced.
Four years later, in 1983, she opened her second Bengawan Solo outlet, at the Centrepoint shopping centre on Orchard Road. There are now more than 40 Bengawan Solo outlets island-wide. Anastasia continues to run the business with the help of her son, Henry. She still pays close attention to quality control and ensures that the best ingredients are used. When customers complained about a dip in the quality of the cakes following a major expansion of outlets in the 1990s, she personally studied the manufacturing and operational processes and instituted a standards system. Customer feedback is taken very seriously, and Anastasia conducts daily inspections of the company’s factory in Woodlands. While some of the operations at the factory are automated, most of the items are still handmade or hand-finished. This is the only way, says Anastasia, to ensure that the kueh-kueh is of the right texture. In 1998, Anastasia was the first recipient of the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises’ Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Award. In the same year, she was also a finalist for the Rotary-A SME Entrepreneur of the Year Award. She was awarded the Public Service Medal in 2008.
Anastasia Tjendri-Liew
Anastasia Tjendri-Liew (b. 1947, Bangka Island, Indonesia–) is the founder and managing director of Bengawan Solo, one of Singapore’s most successful bakery chains. Under her leadership, Bengawan Solo has grown from a single store to a chain with over 40 outlets. Tjendri-Liew grew up in Indonesia before coming to Singapore in 1970. Born on Bangka Island, Indonesia, Tjendri-Liew was the third of eight children and grew up in Palembang. Her mother was a homemaker, while her father ran a provision shop. She did well in school, usually finishing within the top three in class, but civil unrest in the city curtailed her education during her teenage years. Her interest in food was clear from childhood, when she sometimes walked to school so she could use her bus fare to buy food such as fried noodles and pempek, an Indonesian fishcake. After leaving school, Tjendri-Liew took up baking and cooking classes to hone the culinary skills that she had picked up from her mother and aunt as a teenager. She improved on the recipes she was taught and conducted her own culinary classes from home, using the income to take up an even wider variety of classes.
In 1970, Tjendri-Liew came to Singapore to improve her command of English. There, she met her husband Johnson Liew, who is also an Indonesian-Chinese. They married in 1973 and have a daughter, Rissa, and a son, Henry. In 1975, Tjendri-Liew was a homemaker when she started making butter and chiffon cakes and kueh lapis (an Indonesian layered cake) at her four-room flat in Marine Parade. She sold these cakes to friends and acquaintances, and the popularity of her confections grew through word of mouth. The demand rose so much that she began to supply them to supermarkets and shops, with one department store in Lucky Plaza even setting up a retail counter to showcase her confectionery. Tjendri-Liew did not have a food manufacturing licence, and in 1979, officials from the Ministry of Health visited and instructed her to stop supplying to shops from her home kitchen. Tjendri-Liew thereafter ceased operations from home, but customers continued to request for her cakes and kueh. This prompted her to open a shop at Marine Terrace, near her home, a few months later. As the shop had been empty for one to two years, Tjendri-Liew succeeded in securing a low starting rent of S$1,200 and named the shop Bengawan Solo after the popular Indonesian folk song about Indonesia’s Solo River.
The popularity of Bengawan Solo grew and demand for her cakes became overwhelming, helped by a newspaper review that emphasised their homemade taste. Customers urged her to open another shop in a more central location, and she obliged in 1983 with a second outlet at the Centrepoint shopping centre on Orchard Road. Tjendri-Liew’s business philosophy is to use the best ingredients possible to ensure the quality of the final product. She addressed quality control issues by personally overseeing the manufacturing processes and taking customer feedback seriously. The number of Bengawan Solo outlets increased every year as the business registered profits and turnover growth annually. Tjendri-Liew took charge of every area of Bengawan Solo’s operations such as production, sales, personnel, accounting, finance, product design and development, advertising and purchasing. Her efforts were recognised in 1998 when she became the first recipient of the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises’ Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Award. She was also honoured with the Public Service Medal in 2008.
Anastasia Tjendri-Liew
Anastasia Tjendri-Liew (Born in 1947, Bangka Island, Indonesia) is the founder and managing director of Bengawan Solo, one of Singapore's bakery franchises.
Tjendri-Liew was born in Indonesia and immigrated to Singapore in 1970. Bengawan Solo has expanded from a single store to a chain with over 40 locations under her supervision. Tjendri-Liew grew up in Palembang, Indonesia, as the third of eight children born on the Indonesian island of Bangka. Her mother was a stay-at-home mom, while her father managed a grocery store. She excelled at school, generally placed in the top three of her class, but there were limited educational opportunities during her adolescence. Shew took cooking lessons and began teaching cooking as a way to earn money to further her education.
Anastasia was the first woman to receive the Association of Small and Medium Enterprises' Woman Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 1998. In 2008, she was also awarded the Public Service Medal.[4][5] In 2013, she was awarded the Public Service Star.
Behind the scenes with Anastasia Liew at Singapore’s Bengawan Solo
Anastasia Liew, 72, may be Singapore’s Queen of Kueh, but there was a time when she was an immigrant housewife baking cakes to sell from the kitchen of her government-subsidised Housing Board flat. Born in Sumatra, Indonesia, she arrived in the island nation in the early 1970s, met and married accounts executive Johnson Liew – 15 years older and also from Indonesia – and they had a daughter and a son.
Liew’s reputation as a cake-maker spread by word of mouth. When a couple of department stores started to stock her cakes, her kueh lapis (layer cake), butter cake, chocolate butter cake, pandan chiffon and banana cake became available on Orchard Road, Singapore’s main shopping area. Then, in 1979, health inspectors showed up and told her it was illegal to make cakes at home for sale in shops. She had to quit or get proper premises. She decided to rent a vacant shop in the block next to her Marine Terrace home, and named it Bengawan Solo, after the popular Indonesian folk song. “I wanted a name customers would find easy to remember,” Liew says.
A plain glass case displayed her five cakes, and people from the neighbourhood became regular customers. After some time, she began selling Nyonya kueh too. Everything changed for Liew and Bengawan Solo two years later, when a story appeared in The Straits Times, Singapore’s main English-language newspaper. In that era before online influencers told people where to go, food-obsessed Singaporeans took their lead from the papers.
Made with Passion: Preserving the flavours of the past, for future generations to enjoy
Founder Anastasia Liew and her son Henry Liew, director of Bengawan Solo, at Bengawan Solo's flagship store at Jewel Changi Airport. Photo: Bengawan Solo
Throughout Singapore, the buttery sweet aroma emanating from bakeries has lured many a customer into buying cookies, cakes or nyonya kueh as an indulgent tea-time treat. But when the COVID-19 pandemic struck, walk-in customer traffic took a hit while restrictions on international travel meant that tourists were no longer snapping up edible Singaporean souvenirs.
Despite the challenges, bakery chains Bengawan Solo and Old Seng Choong kept their passion for Singaporean baked goods and kueh going strong. To help local residents rediscover beloved traditional flavours, they continued using premium ingredients and brainstormed creative recipes and packaging to keep things fresh for the Instagram crowd. Household name Bengawan Solo is a familiar presence in malls all over the island, and customers often drop by their outlets to pick from the colourful array of nyonya kueh and traditional cakes. Popular choices include the pandan chiffon cake, lapis sagu – also known as the kueh with rainbow layers – and ondeh ondeh, green-hued rice flour balls with a sweet gula melaka filling.
“We have always used only the freshest and most premium natural ingredients,” said Bengawan Solo’s founder Anastasia Liew. “We use coconut milk squeezed from fresh coconuts in our central kitchen right before use, and fresh pandan juice made with whole pandan leaves.” She added that the jam for Bengawan Solo’s signature pineapple tarts is made in-house with fresh honey pineapples, while each layer of its rich kueh lapis is handmade with the chain’s own spice blend.
