Southeast Asia’s bread scene was stale. In the 1960s, bread was just bread: dry, dense, and nothing special.

Especially in 1969 Malaysia, that’s all anyone knew about bread. It wasn’t something people looked forward to.

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✈️ A mission lands in Sabah

But that year, two unlikely partners would change everything: Wong Tze Fatt, a Malaysian entrepreneur who built Tong Hing Supermarket from a family coffee shop, and Horatio “Sye” Slocumm, an American baker with 35 years’ experience.

Wong, always on the lookout for new ideas, wanted to bring better bread to Sabah.

When his own supermarket bakery couldn’t keep up with demand, he reached out for help—and Sye arrived, suitcase in hand, on a mission from the International Executive Service Corporation (IESC), a US non-profit that parachuted experts into developing markets.

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👨🏻‍🍳 Bready or not

Sye wasn’t looking for adventure. He was nearing retirement after decades in the bakery business.

But, because of IESC, he was sent to Malaysia to help launch a new, modern bakery and teach locals to master the art of soft, high-quality bread that people would actually want to eat.

And the mission was far from easy.

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😬 Trial by fire

Sye arrived to a skeptical crew. The bakers barely spoke English, and they’d never seen or tasted this “soft, fluffy bread” Sye spoke of.

Now, they’d have to make it.

It was a lot of trial and error, and it was a struggle to keep team morale high and let them believe they could make it happen.

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🥖 The breakthrough 

But Sye didn’t stop. Night after night, he tweaked recipes, taught techniques, and insisted on quality.

After weeks of trial and error, something magical happened. They finally nailed it: loaves that were soft, fragrant, and most importantly, delicious.

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👃🏻 Word of mouth (and nose)

But it wasn’t a flashy ad campaign that put Gardenia on the map. It was the aroma.

The bakery’s storefront would fill with the smell of fresh bread, drifting out into the street. 

People passing by couldn’t help but follow their noses inside. Word spread fast—friends told friends, and families started showing up together.

Soon, queues were forming out the door, with people eager to get their hands on a loaf before they sold out (which they did, almost every day).

Suddenly, bread wasn’t just a part of breakfast. It was the main event and something people actually looked forward to.

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🚀 Scaling up without selling out

Success brought its own problems. Demand exploded, and the tiny team scrambled to keep up. Investors saw dollar signs. Competitors started copying the formula.

The easy move would have been to cut corners, automate everything, and cash in.

But Wong, Sye, and the team doubled down on quality. They invested in a central bakery, bringing in new ovens and processes to ensure every loaf was as good as the first.

It was a risky bet. Automation was expensive, and the market was untested.

Thankfully, it paid off.

Gardenia became a household name across Sabah and East Malaysia, and Wong’s business empire grew to include not just bread, but soft drinks, ice cream, and even in-flight catering.

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🌏 Hitting the accelerator

But Gardenia’s story was just getting started.

In the late 1970s, a new chapter began when Roland Goh, a Singaporean who married into Wong’s family, tasted Sye’s legendary bread in Sabah. He knew Singapore needed this.

So in 1978, Roland took over an old bakery and launched Gardenia at Bukit Timah Plaza. 

It was one of the first shopping centres built outside Singapore’s city centre, designed as a “regional shopping centre” to serve the fast-growing residential suburbs.

Its location at the crossroads of major roads in one of Singapore’s most affluent districts made it the perfect spot for introducing a new kind of bread targeting homesick expats and locals hungry for something better.

The secret? The same soft, fragrant loaves, and a marketing campaign that played up Gardenia’s American roots.

The bread flew off the shelves. But the real fuel came in the mid-1980s, when QAF Limited, a Singapore-based food group with big ambitions, stepped in.

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💼  Splitting the business

In 1984, Wong sold several Gardenia companies, including the one in Peninsular Malaysia to QAF Limited.

This led to the formation of Gardenia Bakeries (KL) Sdn. Bhd., which is now co-owned by QAF and Bernas and operates only in Peninsular Malaysia.

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🏝️ What stays with the family

After the sale, Wong and his family retained ownership of Gardenia Sabah and related businesses in East Malaysia, Brunei, and Indonesia.

These entities stay separate from QAF-controlled operations in Peninsular Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines, each with distinct management and product lines.

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🌍 Regional brand, local origins

As Gardenia’s reputation grew, the brand crossed borders to the Philippines and beyond. 

But here’s the twist: because of the way the business developed, Gardenia became separate companies in different countries, each adapting the brand to local tastes and needs.

So the Gardenia loaf you grew up with isn’t exactly the same as the one in other countries, but the its core is the same: soft, fresh, and reliable.

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🍽️ Going beyond

Gardenia didn’t stop at white bread. Today, the company bakes up over 50 different products daily. Wholemeal, multigrain, sambal ikan bilis buns, even yellow noodles. 

They churn out more than a billion bakery products a year, with over 2,000 trucks delivering to nearly 80,000 stores across Southeast Asia.