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Passion, creativity, resilience the ingredients of success for three women heading restaurant groups in Hong Kong
- Yenn Wong arrived to run a boutique hotel at 23 and built a group with more than 10 restaurants. Elizabeth Chu took over the family business at a young age too
- Laura Offe is another hospitality trailblazer. All reflect on the challenges they overcame and the rewards of an industry that’s ‘happy’ and ‘fun every day’
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When she was 23, Yenn Wong was asked by her father to move from Singapore to Hong Kong to open the JIA Boutique Hotel in Causeway Bay, on Hong Kong Island.
“It was completely disastrous, because it was during [the Sars outbreak in 2003],” she recalls. Nonetheless, with just one assistant and one project manager, she managed to build up the boutique hotel from scratch – despite no contacts, colleagues or friends in the city.
That was how Wong’s entrepreneurial spirit was ignited. She’s since founded and expanded JIA Group, a Hong Kong-based restaurant group whose portfolio has grown to more than 10 restaurants, including the Michelin-starred Duddell’s, Louise and Mono.
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ZS Hospitality Group chairwoman Elizabeth Chu Yuet-han and Meraki Hospitality Group co-founder Laura Offe, too, can thank their parents for playing similar, pivotal roles in their paths to becoming entrepreneurs in the food and beverage industry.
Chu, after graduating from the University of Hong Kong with a politics and public administration degree, took over the management of ZS from her parents in 2017.
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