He dreamed he was lost in a raging sea, but someone threw him a plank that turned into a bridge and brought him to dry land. When he awoke, he confidently approached his church’s pastor for a loan and immediately received the cash that he needed.

In 1901, the two friends founded the Hiap Seng Sauce Factory, which was renamed Yeo Hiap Seng Sauce Factory after the friend pulled out of the business two years later. While “Yeo” was Keng Lian’s family name, “hiap” was chosen because, when written in Chinese, it has a cross character – symbolising Christ – and three copies of the Chinese character for strength. Finally, “seng” means “success”.

Christian values were important in Yeo Hiap Seng – company meetings started with prayers and hymns, employee welfare was prioritised, and good hospitality was emphasised.

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Although Yeo Hiap Seng now produces a diverse range of food and drinks – apart from its famous chrysanthemum tea, there are also the popular grass jelly and sugar cane drinks – for most of the 20th century the company only made the Asian household staple of soy sauce.

It was Yeo Thian In – Keng Lian’s second-eldest son – who would expand his father’s business and take it to Southeast Asia.

Keng Lian handed the business to Thian In after his son graduated in 1920, aged 21. Thian In read widely and attended exhibitions around the region, acquiring technology that increased productivity. Innovating and building equipment such as motorised grinders and water-drawing machines were among his many contributions to the family business.

Everything changed when war broke out in China in July 1937. As the Japanese closed in on Zhangzhou, Thian In’s mother, Xu Gan Niang, encouraged him to venture overseas.

Thian In left his seven siblings and boarded a crowded junk with his wife and four sons on a spartan and perilous voyage to Singapore, where his uncle, Jin Ban, helped him establish Yeo Hiap Seng.

Thian In’s eldest son chose to stay in China to fight the Japanese. Thian In would not see his mother again, as she died in November that year.

Thian In and his family initially slept on mats in a small rented room in Telok Ayer, in Singapore’s Chinatown. His new factory on nearby Outram Road started operations on September 18, 1938.

The easy availability of salt, water, soybeans, transport and electricity facilitated Yeo Hiap Seng’s business in a new world. Keng Lian had taught his children and employees to always open and close the shop punctually. The Singapore outlet opened on time every day to long queues that snaked around the block, just like they did outside the shop in Zhangzhou. However, Japanese forces marching southwards were to catch up with Thian In eventually.

On January 17, 1942, a 10kg bomb hit the factory, and while most of the building was destroyed, Thian In discovered that vats of fully processed soy sauce, along with raw materials stored at the back of the building, were left unscathed.

While the Japanese Imperial Army converted other soy sauce factories into ammunition depots, the Yeo Hiap Seng factory was left alone because it looked like it had been destroyed. However, Thian In and his family were stealthily fermenting and bottling soy sauce behind the debris. Customers did their part by selling rations they received to Yeo Hiap Seng, which used the beans, salt and sugar to make soy sauce for them.

One of the few surviving businesses left to cater to the region’s insatiable appetite for soy sauce, Yeo Hiap Seng continued to grow after World War II and opened a 10-acre (four-hectare) facility in central Singapore’s Bukit Timah area in 1951. Yeo Hiap Seng’s new products were warmly received, too – in 1952, the brand launched its canned curry chicken, which saw high demand across the region because it was portable, had a long shelf life and was made in accordance with Islamic law.

“Canned food like our famous curry chicken was delicious, of good quality, hygienic and affordable at a time when food quality and safety were not a given,” says Yeo Hiap Seng’s recently appointed group CEO, Samuel Koh, who previously worked as a senior executive with Coca-Cola for almost a decade.

Yeo Hiap Seng also started bottling soy milk that same year. “Soy milk is tasty and highly nutritious. It is similar to dairy milk in terms of protein and vitamins. Yet it is more affordable and is better suited for the lactose intolerant. These products were innovative, great-tasting and culturally relevant. They clearly fulfilled the needs of our consumers,” Koh says.

Later on, Yeo Hiap Seng decided to sell the nutritious broth left over from boiling chicken for the curries, which the company sold as chicken essence. Other hits that Yeo Hiap Seng rolled out over the years include chilli sauce, tomato sauce, oyster sauce, instant noodles and canned versions of sambal ikan bilis (spicy anchovies), sambal prawn, beef curry, mutton curry, instant noodles and fish in soy sauce.

By the late 1950s, Yeo Hiap Seng’s production capacity had grown to 20,000 cans of food per day. While its main markets were Malaysia and Singapore, Yeo Hiap Seng was also feeding hungry residents of Borneo, Sarawak, New Guinea, Australia, the US and UK, and it even fed American troops during the Vietnam war.

In 1965, the business was divided between Keng Lian’s five sons and two of his grandsons. Yeo Hiap Seng was listed on the Singapore stock exchange in 1969, and in 1975 gained exclusive bottling and distribution rights for Pepsi in Singapore and Malaysia, which allowed Yeo’s to improve its production standards.

Yeo Hiap Seng acquired General Bottling from Hong Kong in 1981, which boosted revenue from S$96 million in 1981 to S$146 million in 1982. The company bottled 7-Up, which was often drunk on auspicious occasions because “7-Up” in Cantonese sounds like “seven happiness”.

In 1995, Yeo Hiap Seng was acquired by Singaporean property magnate Ng Teng Fong, who bought a controlling interest in the business after a bidding war with Malaysian property tycoon Quek Leng Chan.

The mass distribution of Yeo’s chrysanthemum tea to mark Singapore’s 55th birthday resulted in Instagram being flooded with thousands of photos of Yeo’s products. Yeo’s Chrysanthemum Tea enjoys iconic status throughout the region, as does Yeo’s Grass Jelly Drink, Water Chestnut Drink and Winter Melon Tea, as these drinks are believed to have medicinal properties.

Hugely popular in China, Yeo’s Water Chestnut Drink is still painstakingly made by hand from the husked vegetable. In Indonesia, Yeo’s Grass Jelly Drink resonates with locals who are fond of herbal jelly desserts.

“I feel very excited and confident about the opportunities we see to better serve our consumers and communities. This is true for our home market of Singapore as well as our other key markets like Malaysia, China and Indochina,” says Koh, who views the outpouring on social media over National Day as evidence that Yeo’s brand equity still has immense untapped potential.

“If we serve our consumers well, this will inevitably lead to growth of our people and business. Yeo’s has been serving up goodness since 1900 and we aim to do so for another 120 years.”