Single Mother Tseng Feng-yu Builds a Noodle Empire

Located near the historic section of Tainan is Mintzu Road, a short road which is home to six danzi noodle restaurants. Of these, Chi Kan Dan Tze Mian is the youngest, but it is also the only 24-hour noodle shop in the entire city.

This century-old building was once in a severe state of disrepair, but after seeing the constant flood of customers, Tseng, who had set up shop downstairs, started thinking about how to expand her store. After having rented the upper floor a few months earlier, she started expanding her opening hours, and now the store is open to customers all day, and has managed to stand out even amongst the wealth of old-fashioned culture Tainan boasts. In 2004, after only four years in business, Chi Kan was accepted alongside the century-old Tuhsiaoyueh as Tainan's most iconic old-style restaurant.

However, renovating the old building cost a great deal of time and money; the weak roof had to be torn off the second floor, all new wooden supports fitted, 15 water pipes repaired, faux-ancient carved window-frames installed, and 20-plus old elementary-school desks were set up inside. In total, the cost of providing customers with a classical setting in which to enjoy their danzi noodles, braised pork on rice, bamboo shoots with pork, or other traditional snacks has been four renovations at a cost of NT$4 million.

Wandering child

Behind Tseng's brilliant success with Chi Kan Dan Tze Mian is a story of willpower and tenacity.

A dozen years ago, when she divorced her husband, Tseng signed an agreement to pay off his debts. To earn the money, she set up a stand in an arcade selling NT$40 bowls of noodles. Since she opened her own shop four years ago trade has grown rapidly, and now she has four stores, with locations in Tainan and Kaohsiung, employing nearly 90 female staff, 80% of whom are single mothers.

Tseng, who has only a fifth-grade education, was born into a family that ran a small-time casino. Where she slept, she would often be woken up in the middle of the night by the sound of drunken gamblers and vomiting drunks. She made up her mind to escape this family that had no low to which it wouldn't stoop, and decided that a life on the streets would be preferable to what she was living. So while still a young girl, Tseng left home and spent her life living and working in teashops and karaoke halls.

By the age of 21, she had had enough, and married a man 12 years her senior. She began helping her new mother-in-law out at the family's noodle restaurant, and was sure everything was going to be different from there on out. But then in 1986, when the New Taiwan Dollar suddenly surged in value, money began pouring into the country and Taiwan's capital market turned to chaos, with no outlet for domestic funds. Everyone began madly gambling their money on lotteries and other such pursuits, and Tseng's husband and mother-in-law caught the gambling bug. She was alarmed by her husband's irresponsibility and feared the family would soon go bankrupt, but their younger daughter was only one year old at the time, and Tseng couldn't bear the thought of abandoning her. So despite having already signed the divorce papers, Tseng hung on for over a decade, living in the same house as her now ex-husband.

Meanwhile, she put her experience with running a noodle stand to work, with virtually all she brought in being taken by her creditors. On the occasions when she couldn't make her payments, she would be cursed and screamed at by the creditor until tears streamed down her face, but she had to take a deep breath and turn back to the customers with a smile on her face.

Tseng worked all through the year to make a living and pay her debts. In the bitter cold of Chinese New Year's eve, her daughters would be working alongside her, all three washing dishes until their hands were raw. Such were their lives for over a decade.

The original branch on Mintzu Road has a nostalgic decor, and the sign for the old tenant--a dentist--is still on display. The bamboo stalls out front of the restaurant were once the tools of the trade for street-side vendors.

Paying the piper

It wasn't until their eldest daughter was 20 that Tseng finally left her husband. Flat broke, Tseng tried to set up a new home and a new life for her daughters.

Even at her lowest points, Tseng was trying to find a way to set up a proper restaurant, but her credit had been destroyed by her ex-husband, and no bank would give her a loan. Out of desperation, she turned to underworld loan sharks, borrowing NT$600,000 to rent an old place for NT$50,000 a month.

After a bit of renovation, the shop opened its doors in 2002. A keen businesswoman, Tseng offered a special price of just NT$10 per bowl that day, packing the street with customers. That evening, Tseng wrote out a NT$100,000 check to a charity, post-dated by three months, to push herself to make more money. Her donation earned her a sizable reputation and much media attention, essentially providing a free advertising campaign.

With the store situated well in a major tourist area, weekends were always jam-packed. Three months later, not only was Tseng able to honor that check, she had also cleared her debt with the loan sharks.

The most crucial part of keeping the customers rolling in for a danzi noodle restaurant is the scent of fresh cooking meat, and Tseng insists on using only the freshest pork. After slicing and grinding the meat, she adds onion, garlic, scallops, rock sugar and soy sauce, and stews the mixture over a slow flame. Time and heat level are automatically controlled, guaranteeing the quality of the result. The next stage is to cook up a broth of scallops, shrimps, and pork bones, in which she also stews duck eggs, giving the eggs a unique flavor. The store offers over a dozen different dishes, with herbal tea, spicy pickled cabbage, and soup stock provided free of charge.

To try and escape the stigma that surrounds danzi noodles as being a "street-vendor thing," Tseng has striven to create a special dining environment by decorating the store in an old-fashioned style. This particular creative touch comes from her eldest daughter, who has always been interested in design.

Four years ago, that same daughter was accepted into the Department of Tourism Management at Taipei's Chinese Culture University. However, she only stayed one semester, having found she had no interest in tourism and being unable to afford the over NT$50,000 tuition fees. Now she is her mother's right-hand woman and the manager of their Kaohsiung branches.

Always moving forward

People generally think of female entrepreneurs as being less ambitious, but Tseng is definitely different. Never one to rest on her laurels, she is opening new stores at what seems like one a year. Even her daughters are wavering, as they consider it all too tiring, but Tseng continues to build production, reduce costs, and keep the business on course.

Additionally, with as many as 80% of her staff being single mothers, Tseng has achieved something no other Taiwanese company has been able to do.

Staff are divided into full-time workers and hourly-paid part-timers, giving the single mothers the ability to head back to work after taking care of their children.

Aware of her lack of education, once the store had expanded Tseng made time for English and Japanese courses so she could better serve the overseas tourists coming to the store during holidays. Two years previously she had taken courses in marketing management and personnel management at nearby National Cheng Kung University, which she then put to use in the business, establishing an incentives system, setting up a roster of duty managers, and offering bonuses for staff who come up with well received new dishes. With a bit of effort, her staff can earn over NT$30,000 a month, a tempting offer for local women.

In late October, Chi Kan Dan Tze Mian is set to open a new store on Tungning Road, just a few hundred meters from their second store in Tainan. Tseng already has plans to make this three-story, 1000-square-meter store the replacement for that old second store.

There have already been mother-daughter disagreements over this new store. A few days before signing the lease, the two agreed it would be best to take their time setting the new place up so they could continue to devote more of their energies to their current stores. However, Tseng's restless nature once again came to the fore. Always one to welcome a challenge, she says, "I'm amazed at myself!"

Making the trip between her four stores every day, it seems as though Tseng is almost never at home. But taking a break in one of the stores, she still seems as lively as ever, greeting customers with a smile, all the while writing a new chapter in the story of a female entrepreneur who has been willing to tackle any problem.

In the old days, when customers ate danzi noodles they would sit on small bamboo stools next to the vendor's stall. To give the restaurant a more old-fashioned feel, Chi Kan's noodle cooker is the same height as those old stalls.