HK entrepreneur offers quality group catering on mainland

Shum Ming-fung conducts a food safety inspection in the kitchen of his restaurant.

Hong Kong entrepreneur Shum Ming-fung, as a corporate catering service provider, aims to serve more enterprises with quality Cantonese food.

Shum decided to start his own business as he saw a huge market potential in group catering services of Cantonese-style food. In 2016, Shum set up his Shenzhen Tango Catering Management Co. Ltd. in Qianhai, specializing in serving quality Cantonese food for corporate clients. He said Qianhai has been known for its large number of Hong Kong-funded enterprises, and many Hong Kongers work here and they want Cantonese food.

Following years of hard work, his company now has four corporate clients – Tencent, Huawei, SF Express and Wal-Mart, all big names in the city.

“Compared to other restaurants, the food courts we run at the enterprises are small in size, but we provide fine Cantonese food for their employees,” he said. “We have experienced Cantonese cuisine chefs, and our company has strict and standardized food-making procedures to ensure food safety while focusing on the flavor and freshness of the food.”

Shum said Qianhai’s business friendly environment attracted him to Qianhai as the place to register his company.

According to him, registering his company at the Qianhai Cooperation Zone Authority saved him a lot of trouble in terms of updating the company address, which is a common issue for small and micro-sized startups.

“A start-up may frequently change its office address due to various reasons. If not in Qianhai, whenever we changed our company address, we had to change the address on all of our restaurants’ business licenses. This is really a time-consuming issue.”

His company also enjoyed favorable policies such as the office rent reduction.

Shum settled his home in Shenzhen last year after marrying a woman on the mainland. “Not only the business environment, but life in Qianhai in general is also very convenient,” he said, adding that he plans to raise his children in Shenzhen, rather than Hong Kong.

Shum attended Jinan University in Guangzhou after finishing the Hong Kong diploma of secondary education examination in 2004, as he was attracted by the cozy and spacious campus of the university.

He had worked for three companies, in Haikou, Hainan Province, Wuhan, Hubei Province and Shenzhen, before starting his own business.

“Shenzhen is a land of dreams and opportunity; we want to have more young people join in our group catering business,” he said.