News - Midlands
A Glorious Enterprise
Surely no businessman in Britain carries a more befitting name than Wing Yip: "Glorious Enterprise".
Since stepping off the boat from Hong Kong, the former waiter has become one of Britain's most successful Chinese businessmen, having built up an £380m-a-year empire whose products are devoured by hundreds of thousands of Britons each week.
And, not content with supplying most of the UK's Chinese restaurants, own-brand goods to the retail multiples, and being "the biggest grocer in Britain that doesn't sell milk, bread or cheese", the sexagenarian's thoughts are now on positioning the business as one of the main retail links between the UK and China.
But this is racing ahead of ourselves: let's go way back to 1959, to a land of smog, two channel telly, Tommy Steele and truly awful "smother it in brown sauce" cuisine.
Into this world stepped a young, ambitious Wing Yip and straight into scrubbing dishes in a Chinese restaurant in Hull.
However Yip was soon promoted to waiter "because I was the only one who could speak English". After 18 months he and the head chef decided to set up in business together, and opened a restaurant in a former tea shop in Clayton-on-Sea.
Although the location sounds less than promising, Yip soon built a small chain of restaurants and takeaways around East Anglia. He claims that, despite appearances, both the location and timing were perfect.
He adds: "Then East Anglia was full of American airmen who were well paid and wanted to show off to the local girls by taking them to a restaurant. We used to hold dinner dances on Saturday nights. And, because they were American, they were used to food from different countries.
"Chinese food filled a big gap in the market. In the 60s you either bought fish and chips or you went to a traditional restaurant and paid two guineas for a meal, - not an option for people earning just a few pounds a week - and restaurants were not family friendly.
"The other thing was that hotels, restaurants and chip shops closed at about 10pm, which meant that there was nowhere else for people to go after they came out of the pubs at closing time.
"To be honest a lot of people didn't like Chinese food to start with but, after three or four pints, you can get to like anything, and then you get used to it."
So it would have continued had not Yip made the prescient decision to, instead of serving food, supply it to restaurants and takeaways.
He says the problem with the restaurant trade was that too many people followed his example and set up by themselves: "Each time I trained a new chef he'd leave and become my competitor."
In 1970 he and his brother Sammy opened Britain's first specialist grocery store in Birmingham, stocking more than 1,000 products for the region's restaurants.
He says: "I went to the library and found that all the key British companies - Boots, Marks & Spencer - started outside of London. I realised that if I started a business in London it would get killed.
"So I started looking around at where to base it. I settled on Birmingham because of its motorway links: in three hours I could reach three quarters of the UK population.
"A lot of my friends thought that I was stupid: then there were only about 50 Chinese restaurants in the whole of the Midlands, and because I was basing myself in Birmingham although my goods were coming in through Southampton and Felixstowe.
"But I wanted to organise my distribution around my customers, not the ports.
I thought that Birmingham was perfect."
And 35 years on Yip's gamble has more than paid off. The company eventually opened up in Manchester, quickly followed by stores in Croydon and Cricklewood: the latter is now undergoing a £317m expansion that will add a 70,000 sq ft superstore, restaurant, cafxe9 and business centre.
A move into Cardiff, to cover Wales and the West, is likely within the next two years, followed by proposals to set up a base in Scotland.
Despite, or because, he now heads a £380m empire, Yip cannot help but get involved in the minutiae of the business.
During the photoshoot for this article he repeatedly shot away to the shelves of his superstore in Aston, Birmingham, picking up and changing some minor detail that wholly passed me by.
Although English is still very obviously Yip's second language, this is more to his benefit than detriment. He answers questions fully but clearly using direct, simple words that convey exactly what he means.
A small, precisely dressed man, Yip is the model of good manners, making sure that both me and the photographer have been well provisioned with refreshments and, although obviously pushed for time, agreeing to every request for a fresh photo angle, no matter how apparently absurd.
However there is a steely edge to his character: after the interview a request to help get staff to pose for a cover shot for this magazine was met with a polite but firm refusal: "I'm not a modelling agency".
Although he has been based in Britain for almost half a century, Yip's pride in his Chinese roots remain strong. It is not just in the obvious signs - the massive oriental arches outside his stores, the bilingual signage within - but the way he refers to what he sees as the strengths of the Chinese character as hard working, entrepreneurial, close family ties.
Although welcome, shoppers account for as little as a 20th of Yip's turnover, popping in only every six months or so. The bulk of his business still comes from the same people he was supplying 35 years ago -restaurateurs and take-away chefs.
Because his main customers have precious little free time, small clusters of professional China - dentists, doctors, accountants, lawyers, bankers - have gathered around each Wing Yip outlet.
His favoured analogy, which he uses a few times, is to compare the modern China with Victorian Britain.
He adds: "It will succeed, not because the Chinese are cheap labour, but because we have a strong work sense and China's such a growing market. They don't want to be labourers, they want to be middle class and have the good life.
"China is like Britain in Victoria's time: it took Britain 150 years to go from a country where people worked 12 hours a day, six days a week and had 20 people living in a house. China will manage that in 20 to 50 years."
It is these links with homeland in which Yip sees the long-term future for his business: not as a purveyor of Cantonese and Mandarin cuisine, but as a trade bridgehead for all Chinese goods.
He adds: "Our slogan is "Wing Yip -
All the Chinese You Need to Know.' In ten years that could read "For things Chinese'
"It will transform the business. I think we'll be ready for this when we have about ten stores because that will give us sufficient buying and distribution power. It's not good just to sell one thing - with ten sites we could sell almost anything.
"It's a natural progression - look at what Tesco has become, more than a food store. We can do the same with Chinese goods."
The company's ownership is also being clearly marked out among the next generation of Yip's children, nephews and nieces - including four accountants and a lawyer - who are already working for the business.
But if you want to see Yip's most public legacy then you need to travel a few miles from the main offices in Aston and into central Birmingham.
There, in the middle of a busy roundabout, stands a 40-foot high pagoda, given by Yip as a thank you to the city where he founded the business. It has become one of Birmingham's landmarks and, inevitably, appears on any collection of images trying to illustrate the city's diversity.
The pagoda was raised after five years of complex and often mind-numbing negotiations with city fathers.
It is made of plain, hard-edged granite, and was hand-carved in China before being shipped over to become one of the city's landmarks - rather like the man himself.
Since stepping off the boat from Hong Kong, the former waiter has become one of Britain's most successful Chinese businessmen, having built up an £380m-a-year empire whose products are devoured by hundreds of thousands of Britons each week.
And, not content with supplying most of the UK's Chinese restaurants, own-brand goods to the retail multiples, and being "the biggest grocer in Britain that doesn't sell milk, bread or cheese", the sexagenarian's thoughts are now on positioning the business as one of the main retail links between the UK and China.
But this is racing ahead of ourselves: let's go way back to 1959, to a land of smog, two channel telly, Tommy Steele and truly awful "smother it in brown sauce" cuisine.
Into this world stepped a young, ambitious Wing Yip and straight into scrubbing dishes in a Chinese restaurant in Hull.
However Yip was soon promoted to waiter "because I was the only one who could speak English". After 18 months he and the head chef decided to set up in business together, and opened a restaurant in a former tea shop in Clayton-on-Sea.
Although the location sounds less than promising, Yip soon built a small chain of restaurants and takeaways around East Anglia. He claims that, despite appearances, both the location and timing were perfect.
He adds: "Then East Anglia was full of American airmen who were well paid and wanted to show off to the local girls by taking them to a restaurant. We used to hold dinner dances on Saturday nights. And, because they were American, they were used to food from different countries.
"Chinese food filled a big gap in the market. In the 60s you either bought fish and chips or you went to a traditional restaurant and paid two guineas for a meal, - not an option for people earning just a few pounds a week - and restaurants were not family friendly.
"The other thing was that hotels, restaurants and chip shops closed at about 10pm, which meant that there was nowhere else for people to go after they came out of the pubs at closing time.
"To be honest a lot of people didn't like Chinese food to start with but, after three or four pints, you can get to like anything, and then you get used to it."
So it would have continued had not Yip made the prescient decision to, instead of serving food, supply it to restaurants and takeaways.
He says the problem with the restaurant trade was that too many people followed his example and set up by themselves: "Each time I trained a new chef he'd leave and become my competitor."
In 1970 he and his brother Sammy opened Britain's first specialist grocery store in Birmingham, stocking more than 1,000 products for the region's restaurants.
He says: "I went to the library and found that all the key British companies - Boots, Marks & Spencer - started outside of London. I realised that if I started a business in London it would get killed.
"So I started looking around at where to base it. I settled on Birmingham because of its motorway links: in three hours I could reach three quarters of the UK population.
"A lot of my friends thought that I was stupid: then there were only about 50 Chinese restaurants in the whole of the Midlands, and because I was basing myself in Birmingham although my goods were coming in through Southampton and Felixstowe.
"But I wanted to organise my distribution around my customers, not the ports.
I thought that Birmingham was perfect."
And 35 years on Yip's gamble has more than paid off. The company eventually opened up in Manchester, quickly followed by stores in Croydon and Cricklewood: the latter is now undergoing a £317m expansion that will add a 70,000 sq ft superstore, restaurant, cafxe9 and business centre.
A move into Cardiff, to cover Wales and the West, is likely within the next two years, followed by proposals to set up a base in Scotland.
Despite, or because, he now heads a £380m empire, Yip cannot help but get involved in the minutiae of the business.
During the photoshoot for this article he repeatedly shot away to the shelves of his superstore in Aston, Birmingham, picking up and changing some minor detail that wholly passed me by.
Although English is still very obviously Yip's second language, this is more to his benefit than detriment. He answers questions fully but clearly using direct, simple words that convey exactly what he means.
A small, precisely dressed man, Yip is the model of good manners, making sure that both me and the photographer have been well provisioned with refreshments and, although obviously pushed for time, agreeing to every request for a fresh photo angle, no matter how apparently absurd.
However there is a steely edge to his character: after the interview a request to help get staff to pose for a cover shot for this magazine was met with a polite but firm refusal: "I'm not a modelling agency".
Although he has been based in Britain for almost half a century, Yip's pride in his Chinese roots remain strong. It is not just in the obvious signs - the massive oriental arches outside his stores, the bilingual signage within - but the way he refers to what he sees as the strengths of the Chinese character as hard working, entrepreneurial, close family ties.
Although welcome, shoppers account for as little as a 20th of Yip's turnover, popping in only every six months or so. The bulk of his business still comes from the same people he was supplying 35 years ago -restaurateurs and take-away chefs.
Because his main customers have precious little free time, small clusters of professional China - dentists, doctors, accountants, lawyers, bankers - have gathered around each Wing Yip outlet.
His favoured analogy, which he uses a few times, is to compare the modern China with Victorian Britain.
He adds: "It will succeed, not because the Chinese are cheap labour, but because we have a strong work sense and China's such a growing market. They don't want to be labourers, they want to be middle class and have the good life.
"China is like Britain in Victoria's time: it took Britain 150 years to go from a country where people worked 12 hours a day, six days a week and had 20 people living in a house. China will manage that in 20 to 50 years."
It is these links with homeland in which Yip sees the long-term future for his business: not as a purveyor of Cantonese and Mandarin cuisine, but as a trade bridgehead for all Chinese goods.
He adds: "Our slogan is "Wing Yip -
All the Chinese You Need to Know.' In ten years that could read "For things Chinese'
"It will transform the business. I think we'll be ready for this when we have about ten stores because that will give us sufficient buying and distribution power. It's not good just to sell one thing - with ten sites we could sell almost anything.
"It's a natural progression - look at what Tesco has become, more than a food store. We can do the same with Chinese goods."
The company's ownership is also being clearly marked out among the next generation of Yip's children, nephews and nieces - including four accountants and a lawyer - who are already working for the business.
But if you want to see Yip's most public legacy then you need to travel a few miles from the main offices in Aston and into central Birmingham.
There, in the middle of a busy roundabout, stands a 40-foot high pagoda, given by Yip as a thank you to the city where he founded the business. It has become one of Birmingham's landmarks and, inevitably, appears on any collection of images trying to illustrate the city's diversity.
The pagoda was raised after five years of complex and often mind-numbing negotiations with city fathers.
It is made of plain, hard-edged granite, and was hand-carved in China before being shipped over to become one of the city's landmarks - rather like the man himself.