Stepping into Lana Cakes one weekday afternoon, I’m told that I’m 20 minutes too late. It was not because of tardiness on my part, though. Rather, I had narrowly missed running into a near-celebrity.
For the uninitiated, Kwan’s mother, Violet, started Lana Cakes as a home-based business in 1964. Customers would drive up to her residence on Hillcrest Road, park their cars, and enter the house to collect their chocolate fudge or chiffon cakes. Eventually, a permanent location had to be sought, so in 1975, Lana Cakes moved into a shophouse on Greenwood Avenue, where it still stands today.
At that point, some introspection was in order. After three decades in banking, was that how he wanted to retire? Or was carrying on his mum’s legacy the way to go? A lengthy discussion with his wife and two sons followed, and in the end, it was decided that he should return to Singapore to carry the mantle of Lana Cakes, while his family remained in Tokyo.
Lana Cakes is charmingly anachronistic: The business still operates from the same single location, and it did not have an internet footprint until the end of 2018. Compare this with the rash of home-based baking businesses that have sprung up since the onset of the pandemic, many of them taking instantly to Instagram to attract customers.
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