Joo Chiat Heritage - “Wrapped in Bamboo Leaves"

Anyone who's watched Kim Choo's kueh lapis being made knows how labor-intensive it is.

Each layer, steamed for five minutes, nine layers deep.

That means every tray of kueh requires a 45-minute process.

I asked Edmund how much of that could be realistically automated.

We do an assortment of kuehs, and rice dumplings is our main thing.

But when it comes to kuehs, there's a lot of stories and narrative that we can share as part of our Peranakan roots.

We believe that automation is, uh, beneficial for us into, with production, but we cannot fully automate certain processes.

Let me give you an example.

When we have off-the-shelves products offered to us to condition or to produce kuehs in a certain way, like through molding and everything, it feels as though as everything can be done very automatically, and we wouldn't require much manpower.

That's good and all.

Uh, but when it comes to producing kuehs, not many people would be aware of it.

It really takes time to set and condition the various ingredients.

Once upon a time, it may take us about four to six hours to condition glutinous rice in Singapore before we can actually use them to wrap rice dumplings.

If we were to compromise with off-the-shelf technology to help us, uh, condition the rice, then it wouldn't meet our requirements, then it wouldn't maintain the current texture of our rice dumplings.

So what we did was that we invested heavily in other forms of technology and in, uh, productivity measures.

Yes, they are all well and good intended ways to, to automate, but we're not looking into fully automation.

We're looking into processes.

Uh, we're looking into solutions to hasten the process, but not to compromise on the quality and the end product of our culinary offerings.

I do love that Kim Choo is observing the time-honored traditions that have been passed down through three generations by being careful in how modern methods are deployed.