Unfortunately, these days, we have stopped buying the siew pow because we find the quality has dropped.

Sunday November 2, 2008

Famed siew pow

By STEPHEN NG

Popular and tasty, the Seremban Siew Pow has very humble roots.

The fame of the Seremban Siew Pow can be traced to one humble woman, the late Loke Mei Ying, who made a living from making and selling baked Chinese dumplings (or “siew pows”) at the old Singapore Street in Seremban back in the early 70s.

Fresh from the oven: Seremban Siew Pau that are ready to be served.

What she has left behind is a whole empire for her son, Teh Siew Kee and the famed Siew Pows which have become the pride of Seremban folk, who buy them to give away to relatives and friends whenever they travel interstate.

When a fire broke out in 1999, Loke thought she had lost everything but if she had lived to this day, Loke would have been amazed to see that her little business has grown to be so popular. Her siew pow has not only become a household name for people in Seremban, but it is well-known all over the country.

In fact, since taking over the business, Teh has added more items to the Siew Pow “empire”.

They now have within their range of food and souvenir items things that are only unique to Seremban, with the hope of boosting the local tourism.

The landmark building beside the Kuala Lumpur-Seremban Highway near the Seremban/ Labu Toll plaza is named “Empayar Seremban Siew Pow.” Teh’s vision is to attract tourists to Seremban.

“Every day, we see thousands of people driving past us, and if Malacca alone had attracted some seven million tourists last year, we should be doing just as well,” he said, hoping that more could be done to attract tourists to the state of Negeri Sembilan.

Like a conqueror, Teh is now looking into expanding the Seremban Siew Pow Empire beyond the borders of Malaysia. “It is already very famous in Singapore,” he said.

“Every month, we have over a hundred tourist buses visiting our complex, including those from across the causeway. If Macau can be famous for its green bean biscuits, we have made a name with our Seremban Siew Pow.”

Bringing his entrepreneurial spirit into the business, Teh said it wasn’t enough just selling the siew pow in the Seremban market.

“We started distributing our siew pows to hawker stalls,” he said. “The business picked up and by then, we had appointed an agent to distribute our siew pows.”

When they first thought of expanding the siew pow business to the Klang Valley, it was initially not well-received.

“After many attempts to look for a suitable outlet, we finally found one hawker stall in SS2, Petaling Jaya, who was willing to give us some space to sell our siew pow. That was back in 1990,” he said. “We were only able to sell about one hundred siew pows in a month. It wasn’t even enough to cover our overheads. But over time, with some perseverance, we were able to see the results.”

Soon, orders were coming in. “We continued to increase the number of outlets in the Klang Valley, and today, our Seremban Siew Pows are available in all states, except Kelantan, Terengganu and Sarawak,” he said.

Apart from the original chicken and pork siew pows, Teh has introduced curry chicken siew pow and vegetarian siew pow.

“We realised that there is a market for vegetarian siew pow,” he said.

> Seremban Siew Pow is located at LG1-57, Tingkat Bawah Tanah, Pasar Besar TBK 4, Taman Bukit Kepayang, 70200 Seremban. Tel: 06-601 6308/9. Website: www.sbansp.com.