Fengjia's shopfront tycoon
The man behind the Japanese-style ta-ko-yaki (octopus balls) enterprise is Taiwan's celebrated Zhang Shi-ren, who is also the owner of Flagship Night Market.
Zhang was born into a well-to-do family, his father a factory owner. Like other night-market stall owners, Zhang loves to experiment. He used to sell his ta-ko-yaki at Wuri- and Tai-ping, and by Ling Tung University, but it wasn't until he came to Feng-jia Night Market that he saw success. Now he's a "night-market hero" with over 200 employees at his main branch, and a global chain of over 400 outlets (including mainland China and even Los Angeles).
In 1995, Zhang visited Osaka, Japan, where he saw a ta-ko-yaki shop with a long line out front, over 100 meters long. He instinctively thought that if he could introduce this to Taiwan, he could make a killing. With the string-pulling of a few friends, he spent several days studying the art of ta-ko-yaki from a Japanese master. After returning to Taiwan, he set up a stall at Wuri-. He had no idea that the Taiwanese couldn't accept the delicate Japanese-style flavor; moreover, the price was too high at six octopus balls for NT$50, and his stall folded several months later.
Unfazed, he tried different locations and adjusted his formulas. To accommodate Feng--jia Night Market's "more-for-less" student culture, he lowered the price to NT$35 (now NT$40), and business skyrocketed. His record sale was 2,800 boxes a day.
"Each time I opened up a new location, business was swift at first, but then it slid back, falling to an unacceptable level. Through constant research, business has leveled out." Sipping tea while smoking a cigarette in his second-floor office, Zhang draws a comparison: Japanese ta-ko-yaki tends toward more of a sweet-and-sour taste, but in Taiwan people like the crisply fried texture, but not too oily. A little wa-sabi gives it some zing.
Zhang, successful in running stalls, now rents out storefronts. The 2000-square-meter Flagship Night Market was once a squat, single-story building. Seeing its potential, Zhang spent two years and NT$100 million buying it up so he could rent out shop spaces. When it opened in 2004, he estimated the annual rental income at tens of millions of NT dollars.
Located near a university, Fengjia Night Market's consumers are mostly young people and tourists. This place is Taiwan's premier birthplace of innovative snacks. At bottom, "one sausage in another" (pig's intestine filled with sticky rice + sausage), and a baked potato meal.