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- 🤯 Why Ocean Empire Food Shop Closed After Injecting HK$30M
🤯 Why Ocean Empire Food Shop Closed After Injecting HK$30M
The Collapse of a 30-Branch Hong Kong Congee Chain
Admond Lee
February 22, 2026
P.S. One brand ran a single The Runway Ventures campaign and generated 250+ founder clicks that turned into inbound leads.
Hey Founders,
Welcome to The Runway Ventures — a weekly newsletter where I deep dive into failed startup stories to help you become the top 1% founder by learning from their mistakes with actionable insights.
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Today’s story is about Ocean Empire Food Shop — a 33-year Hong Kong congee empire that injected HK$30M of personal funds and still collapsed. Let’s get to it! 🚀
Today at a Glance:
☠️ 1 Failed Startup → Ocean Empire Food Shop
⚠️ 2 Mistakes → Treating the downturn as temporary despite the structural demand decline
🧠 3 Lessons Learned → Capital injection is not strategy
🔗 The Runway Insights → How to coach your team (without making them defensive)
💰 Southeast Asia Funding Radar → Inference Research bags $20M (Seed) to develop AI-native quantitative trading systems
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☠️ 1 Failed Startup: Ocean Empire Food Shop
🚀 The Rise of Ocean Empire Food Shop
🇭🇰 Founded by Siu Chor-kee and Choi Wong-hoe in 1992, Ocean Empire Food Shop (海皇粥店) was a Hong Kong–born congee chain that set out to transform a humble bowl of Cantonese porridge into a scalable, systemised, citywide institution.
🕺🏻 Founders’ Story
Ocean Empire started in 1992 when Siu Chor-kee — a scrappy hustler who reportedly worked three jobs to save startup capital — teamed up with Choi Wong-hoe, a CUHK graduate obsessed with fixing businesses through management systems.
They saw a gap in Hong Kong’s congee scene → beloved comfort food, but often sold in cramped dai pai dong settings with inconsistent hygiene and service
🥣 So they opened their first shop in Hung Hom on Ma Tau Wai Road, determined to modernise the experience — clean storefronts, standardised processes, and eventually a central production model to scale quality.
🧑🏻🍳 What they were really building wasn’t just a congee shop — it was an operating system for turning traditional street food into a disciplined, multi-branch chain.
The Problem — 🤧 Congee was popular but came with two issues:
Inconsistent hygiene/quality in traditional dai pai dong settings
Perception that it was only a breakfast food
The Solution — 😍 Ocean Empire modernised the category — clean, standardised storefronts, 5S operational discipline, and a central production model (Welldone Food Company) to ensure consistent taste at scale — while repositioning congee as an all-day meal.
🇭🇰🥣 In short, Ocean Empire was a systems-driven congee chain that turned a humble street-food staple into a scalable, standardised, and trust-led F&B empire.
 | 😍 Instead of each branch improvising, they built standardisation into the DNA of the business — so a bowl in Fanling would taste the same as one in Central. Add ISO 22000 and HACCP certifications on top of that, and suddenly this wasn’t a “neighbourhood porridge stall” anymore — it was an institutionalised F&B operator. |
And guess what? The market responded.
🥣🥣🥣 At its peak, Ocean Empire:
grew to more than 30 outlets across Hong Kong and Macau
hit sales of ~16,000 bowls of congee per day (with boat congee alone moving 6,000–7,000 bowls daily)
successfully pushed congee beyond its “breakfast-only” stigma and turned it into an all-day, reliable, middle-class dining option
Founder Siu Chor-kee was awarded the Silver Bauhinia Star (SBS) — one of Hong Kong’s major civic honours — in recognition of his public and community service
From dai pai dong replacement to certified, 30+ branch chain.
From hustle startup to city-honoured founder.
🫡 From the outside, Ocean Empire was an F&B icon in Hong Kong.
📉 The Fall of Ocean Empire Food Shop
And then, the machine that once systemised porridge began to unravel.
📉 Pay cuts. Lawsuits. Rent arrears. A viral HK$10 buffet that drew crowds but not cash. Behind the clean storefronts, cash flow was bleeding.
By the time employees started chasing unpaid wages, the empire that once sold 16,000 bowls a day was fighting to survive one more month.
🙏🏻 What happened next was messy — and very public.
📌 Here’s what happened to Ocean Empire Food Shop:
Since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, we have used more than HK$30 million (US$3.9 million) of personal funds to make up for the company’s losses…
We have always tried our best and tried every means to save the company and its business. Unfortunately, due to the extremely severe operating environment, we have no choice but to end the business.
🥣🥣🥣 1st outlet, 2nd outlet, 3rd outlet… 30th outlet.
1992 — 🥣 Siu and Choi open the first Ocean Empire shop in Hung Hom (Ma Tau Wai Road), aiming to build a “modernised” congee shop model that customers can trust.
Late 1999 — The company joined a 5S certification plan initiated by the Hong Kong Association of 5S and became the first enterprise invited to participate, passing successfully.
2005–2007 — 👍🏻 Achieved multiple HACCP-related recognitions and ISO 22000 certification.
🥵 Pouring personal funds to save the company
Jul 2019 — 🤧 Management later cited the July 2019 unrest period as a turning point where some branches saw turnover drop steeply, setting the stage for later emergency measures.
Feb 2020 — During the initial COVID shock, the chain confirmed a 20% pay-cut arrangement (80% pay) affecting about 300 employees, with senior management taking the same cut.
2023
Apr — 📉 At the Sha Tin Lucky Plaza “new image” opening, Siu said the chain was down to about 18 branches (from 30+ at peak), is constrained by labour shortages, and was trying to diversify (including packaged congee).
Aug — The Wan Chai Johnston Road shop’s landlord lawsuit later stated a lease was signed, with rent HK$245,000/month in year one and HK$270,000/month in year two.
2024
Apr — 🚨 The same landlord lawsuit alleged rent and related payments were not paid starting from April 2024, leading to later legal action.
Aug — Ming Pao reported Yuen Long and Sheung Shui branches closed as leases expired, part of a wave of closures that shrank the chain rapidly.
Late Aug–Sep — 👨🏻⚖️ The Wan Chai Johnston Road landlord filed a High Court claim seeking ~HK$813,000 and possession-related relief.
28–30 Oct — 🍲 The chain launched the HK$10, 45-minute “congee buffet” promo at the Wan Chai branch.
2025
29 Apr — 🩸 Ming Pao reported 5 branches closed within 8 months, leaving seven.
It also reported a planned, court-authorised auction of seized Sha Tin shop equipment, later cancelled.
7 May — The company notified employees it’d terminate operations immediately, close shops and offices, and end employment contracts, and liquidation to proceed via creditors’ voluntary winding up.
8–10 May — 🙏🏻 Authorities and unions began processing wage and severance claims.
The government said about 100 workers were being helped through the Protection of Wages on Insolvency Fund mechanism.
Jul — A creditor filed a winding-up petition against the parent company, with a High Court hearing set for September 2025.
29 Jul — SCMP reported a HK$7 million civil claim naming the founders, connected to alleged rent defaults at a Tuen Mun outlet and how tenancy ended after closure.
6 Jan 2026 — 💸 The company pleaded guilty and was fined.
Founders didn’t plead guilty, with allegations involving unpaid wages totalling ~HK$562,786.63 for 10 employees.
19 Jan 2026 — Court reporting said Siu was declared bankrupt following a petition by S.A.S. Finance Limited.
Many of us worked here for over 30 years and were not even given a few months of pension.
And just like that, a 33-year institution disappeared behind rolled-down shutters.
🩸🩸🩸 Ocean Empire didn’t collapse without a fight — the founders said they had injected more than HK$30 million of personal funds since COVID began, even selling property and taking loans to keep the business alive.
What once sold 16,000 bowls a day ended with wage claims, court summonses, and bankruptcy filings.
In F&B, reputation is built slowly — but liquidity runs out fast.
Want to learn more about Ocean Empire Food Shop’s downfall?
⚠️ 2 Mistakes
Mistake 1: Treating the downturn as temporary despite the structural demand decline
Ocean Empire continued operating a large, rent-heavy store network even as the market around it fundamentally changed. At its peak, it ran 30+ outlets, but foot traffic had already been hit since 2019 and then worsened by Covid
💸 Instead of aggressively resizing early, the company held onto expensive leases — including a Wan Chai branch renting at up to HK$270,000 per month — and later fell into rent arrears and legal disputes
🚨 The core issue wasn’t operational incompetence — they were strong operators. The problem was misreading the nature of the crisis.
The business behaved as if demand would eventually bounce back to pre-2019 levels.
But consumer behaviour had shifted.
Northbound spending, labour shortages, and mid-tier dining compression were not short-term shocks.
By the time stores were rapidly closing, fixed costs had already eaten through cash reserves.
Mistake 2: Injecting personal capital instead of fixing viability earlier
💸 The founders reportedly injected more than HK$30 million of personal funds to keep the company alive. They even sold property and borrowed money in the process
From a human perspective, this is loyalty and responsibility.
From a business perspective, it extended the runway without fundamentally resetting the model.
🆘 The longer the company operated under stress:
The more rent accumulated
The more wage liabilities built up
The more reputational damage compounded
Eventually, the shutdown became abrupt — affecting employees, suppliers, and leading to bankruptcy
The mistake wasn’t caring too much.
It was believing that capital alone could outlast a structurally weaker business model.
🧠 3 Lessons Learned
Lesson 1: High fixed costs limit flexibility
A business survives not because it is efficient — but because it is adaptable.
Even though Ocean Empire built a beautiful machine (5S discipline, central production, ISO standards, 30+ outlets), it ran on brutal rent economics.
When your rent is HK$245k–270k per month for a single branch, your break-even point is not forgiving.
🥲 When 2019 unrest hit, then Covid, then northbound consumption — demand became volatile. But rent didn’t.
That mismatch kills.
🌮 Key Takeaways:
If your fixed costs don’t flex when demand flexes, your survival window shrinks exponentially.
🛠️ Operator Playbook:
🧪 Stress-test lease exposure
What % of your costs are long-term contractual?
Could you convert some locations to:
Revenue-share leases?
Shorter lease terms?
Cloud kitchen / delivery-only?
💰 Build an elastic revenue layer
Ocean Empire attempted packaged congee in supermarkets — but too late.
Ask yourself:
What revenue channel survives if foot traffic collapses?
Retail SKUs?
Subscriptions?
Corporate catering?
Digital ordering?
If 80% of your revenue depends on foot traffic, you are exposed.
Lesson 2: Capital injection is not strategy
The founders injected over HK$30 million of personal funds, that shows commitment.
But when a business is structurally weaker than its environment, capital delays the outcome — it does not change it.
🌮 Key Takeaways:
Before adding capital, diagnose whether the problem is liquidity or viability.
Liquidity problem → temporary cash timing issue.
Viability problem → the model no longer works under new conditions.
🛠️ Operator Playbook:
🪓 Define a “Kill Metric”
Before injecting more money, define:
At what revenue level do we shut down?
At what branch count do we restructure?
At what monthly loss do we pivot?
Write it down before your emotion clouds it.
🙏🏻 Separate your identity from your business
Ocean Empire was a 30-year legacy brand. That makes closure emotionally difficult.
But operators must ask:
Are we protecting employees?
Or protecting pride?
Sometimes early restructuring saves:
Employee severance
Supplier exposure
Personal bankruptcy
Lesson 3: Volume can’t save bad unit economics
🇭🇰 In Hong Kong, Congee is:
Low price point
Low differentiation moat
Ingredient-heavy but not premium priced
Discounting compresses already tight margins.
While the HK$10 unlimited congee campaign drew crowds and created buzz, the rent was fixed and the product price was low, pushing volume without pricing power can accelerate cash burn.
🌮 Key Takeaways:
When margins are thin, increasing volume increases risk — unless variable costs are truly low.
🛠️ Operator Playbook:
🧪 Run a “Full-Price Cohort Test”
Instead of discounting everything:
Offer discounts to 20% of customers.
Keep 80% full price.
Compare:
Repeat rate
Basket size
Profit per visit
If customers only come when subsidised, you’re renting demand.
🍽️ Increase seat productivity
Monetise off-peak hours (3-5pm) by promoting:
Tea-time bundle
Corporate snack sets
Student pricing (margin-protected)
The goal is not volume. The goal is contribution margin per hour.
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Thanks for reading. I hope you enjoyed today's issue. More than that, I hope you’ve learned some actionable tips to build and grow your business.
You can always write to me by simply replying to this newsletter and we can chat.
See you again next week.
- Admond
Disclaimer: The Runway Ventures content is for informational purposes only. Unless otherwise stated, any opinions expressed above belong solely to the author.
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