A taste of Singapore. Bengawan Solo’s cakes and pastries are some of the most common souvenirs to bring back from Singapore. But did you know it was founded by an Indonesian immigrant who missed home?

This is the story of Bengawan Solo, one of Singapore’s most iconic brands and a household name with over 40 outlets.

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👩🏻‍🍳 The founder

Anastasia Tjendri-Liew didn’t plan on building a business. She came to Singapore in 1970 with just one suitcase to improve her English.

In Singapore, she met and married another Indonesian, Johnson Liew, a few years later.

They moved into their own flat and started a family. While spending time at home, Anastasia started to bake some of the treats she missed from home.

These were butter and chiffon cakes, kueh lapis (Indonesian layered cake), and other traditional delights. Back in Indonesia, she’d taught culinary classes and honed her skills. Skills that would soon come in handy.

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🏠 Going beyond home

At the beginning, she just sold the cakes to friends and neighbors. But they were so good that people kept coming back—and telling others about it.

Word-of-mouth was so strong that even supermarkets and shops asked her to supply them with her cakes! And with her home oven, she got to work and kept baking, many times baking through the night to fulfill all the orders.

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❌ Stop, wait a minute

But like many home bakers, she didn’t have a food manufacturing licence. After all, she didn’t set out to build a business.

It wasn’t a problem until 1979, when officials from Singapore’s Ministry of Health visited her home and told her to stop supplying shops from her kitchen.

But her customers wouldn’t let her quit. Orders for her cakes and kueh kept pouring in, and her family encouraged her to take the next step.

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😱 Leap of faith

She had to make a choice. Was it time to give up or go all in? Anastasia chose to listen to her customers and keep going.

With the support of her family and loyal customers, Anastasia decided to take the leap and open her first shop that same year.

She found an unoccupied unit in her neighborhood with a modest rent of 1,200 SGD ($888) at the time. And when it came time to name her bakery, Anastasia chose “Bengawan Solo”, after her favorite Indonesian song about the Solo River, Java’s longest river.

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💪🏼 The Bengawan Solo way

It was a hit! After opening her first shop in 1979, she opened a second shop in 1983 at Centrepoint, a prime location on Singapore’s famous Orchard Road, marking Bengawan Solo’s entry into central Singapore.

And by 1987, she had five outlets. But that came with its own challenges.

As demand soared and new outlets opened, scaling up became a necessity. But instead of expanding by franchising or outsourcing, Anastasia insisted on doing things the hard way.

For her, this never meant sacrificing standards for speed.

Bengawan Solo invested in a state-of-the-art central kitchen—the first of its kind in Singapore’s confectionery industry. Anastasia built a team of skilled bakers, many of whom were personally trained to master traditional techniques.

Processes were documented and refined. They even adopted new equipment for mixing and baking! Every batch was checked for consistency before being dispatched daily to each outlet.

And each delivery was coordinated so that each outlet received fresh products every morning, guaranteeing that customers across Singapore enjoyed the same quality, whether at the flagship store or a little neighborhood mall.

But the heart of the operation remained hands-on: from the careful layering of kueh lapis to the shaping of pineapple tarts. And they always stayed in service of the original recipes, never cutting corners around quality and authenticity.

After 10 years, they grew from five outlets to 25 and moved to a larger, $6M SGD ($4.44M) factory in Woodlands. And in 2009, a second factory was added at a cost of $5.2M SGD ($3.85M) to double production capacity.

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💙 No compromise

As Singapore’s tastes evolved and dessert trends came and went, Bengawan Solo’s stayed. How? They continued to innovate at the edges, but never at the core.

New products and refreshed packaging kept the brand current, but the recipes stayed authentic.

When ingredient costs soared, Anastasia refused to compromise on quality. When competition rose, she focused on what mattered most: freshness, flavor, and the feeling of home in every bite.

Bengawan Solo’s central kitchen now prepares all products, which are delivered fresh to more than 40 outlets islandwide, two to three times daily.

The company sources 300–400 kg of pandan leaves weekly from Malaysia, and the pandan chiffon cake has become its signature, sparking a “pandan cake craze” in Singapore and beyond.

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🤩 The legacy

Today, Bengawan Solo is more than a bakery. It’s a symbol of Singapore’s multicultural tapestry, with its green-and-gold boxes a familiar sight at festive tables and airport lounges.

The company’s five stores at Changi Airport alone now account for over half of its total sales, serving travelers from across Asia and beyond.

In 2024, Bengawan Solo achieved a sales revenue of about $76M SGD ($56.24M USD), selling 85,000 whole pandan chiffon cakes at $22 SGD ($16.28) each.

The brand has grown to 45 stores across Singapore, and its products are so popular that there’s even a secondary marketfor its cakes in places like Hong Kong.

These days, the company is focusing on selling its products as food gifts across Asia, tapping into the region’s strong gifting culture and exploring overseas opportunities, while always maintaining its commitment to quality and tradition.

But at its heart, Bengawan Solo remains unchanged: every cake is a taste of home, lovingly handmade, just as it was in Anastasia’s first kitchen.