By Emily Wong
“If you can dream it, you can do it. Always remember that this whole thing was started with a dream and a mouse.” This quote from Walt Disney best describes the protagonists in the following story.
(From the right) Daniel Cheong and his two friends, Kene Cheang and Conrad Ip.
In the city center, there is a small pastry shop with the “open” sign gently hanging up on the door. “I love to eat desserts, and am passionate in making these exquisite delicacies too!” said a young man busy making a cup of cappuccino for his guest, who purposely came for his desserts. This pastry shop, named Cakez Café, is located in the alley of the downtown. It has elegant surroundings, as if the presence of this little shop does not belong to the area it is in.
Daniel Cheong is one of the owners of this pastry shop. Cheong and his two friends have worked in local five-star hotels as pastry chefs. The passion for desserts and pastries has made them come together, and hatched an idea to start their own pastry shop someday. “We thought that making desserts was much more flexible than cooking other kinds of food such as Western cuisines. We could add our imagination and creativity in each cake, to make it more attractive and delicious.” In 2012, their long-standing dream finally came true, and this is Cakez Café, the first pastry shop of their own.
In Macao, the gaming industry has occupied the biggest portion of the economy. Under this circumstance, other industries have been underdeveloped. As a solution, the Macao government provides subsides for local people to start their own business. “I think it is not that difficult to start a business in Macao, as the Macao government has provided subsides for start-up businesses. This is important to people who want to open up their business and is the advantage in Macao,” said Cheong.
Having a dream in mind is easy, while it is not easy to keep the passion for the dream and to really take action to fulfill it, but Cheong made it. “In the beginning, I was just accidentally introduced by my friends to enter the field of dessert and pastry making. I’ve found out that I actually love making desserts very much. As I also enjoy eating desserts, I will continue to work hard in my business and hope to share the joy of desserts with more people,” he said.
Although Cheong and his friends are the owners of the shop, they still insist on making every piece of the pastries by themselves. “I’m fond of making pastries and desserts, imagine that I can create and make my own desserts, adding my cute and special designs for each of them, I really love this kind of artworks.” He also pointed out that making desserts is quite different from cooking, which requires lots of training before a satisfactory outcome is produced, and there are not enough experts in this area in Macao at the moment. While talking about their future plans, Cheong was excited, “We hope that we can open two or more branches in the future. While at this moment, we pay most of our attention to the quality of our desserts as well as our customers’ demand and opinion towards our products.”
“When we first started our shop, there wasn’t enough staff. I remembered one time three of us went to the mainland to buy a huge quantity of bowls and dishes ourselves. It was a funny scene to see three guys carrying several hundreds dishes, with some falling out of the boxes while we kept on repacking them,” he laughed. “But all these were good and remarkable memories to all of us.” A smile touched the corners of his lips.
For Cheong, his wonderful world started with a dream, and probably, a piece of cake.