The Tasty, Sweet History of the Australia Dairy Company - Hong Kong's Favourite Cha Chaan Teng

Australia Dairy Company, a frenetic street-side café, is synonymous with Hong Kong’s ancient and booming cha chaan teng industry, a sub-cuisine loved and cherished by Hong Kongers since the 1950s.

Located on a quiet Jordan street in south Kowloon, the Australia Dairy Company - nicknamed in Cantonese as 澳牛 (ou3 ngau4 / Australian Cow) - is famous for many things: it is one of Hong Kongers’ longest surviving cha chaan tengs – enjoying 51 years of operation, a no-frills and speedy lunch service designed for maximum efficiency, a distinct muted yellow storefront, and delectable Hong Kong café classics.

Behind the shop’s signs, dictating customers to don a mask, scan a QR code for COVID-19 contact tracing, and daily specials and lunch items, lays a cha chaan teng with a mysterious history and peculiar customs.

Anyone can cook scrambled or fried eggs, but nothing rivals the creamy eggs from Australia Dairy Company. Breakfast sets and single main items consist of fluffy, moist, bright yellow scrambled eggs plopped onto buttery thick toast, macaroni and ham slices drowned in chicken broth.

The rule is: order quick, eat fast, and leave promptly.

A Backstory From Down Under

Australia Dairy Company, much to the contrary of a naïve customer or Googler, is not a business selling imported dairy products sourced from Down Under, but rather an ode to the owner’s family working history in Hong Kong and connection to Australia.

The original founder of the Australia Dairy Company, Mr. Deng, was a fevered fan of sailing boats and was a son to a businessperson manufacturing and selling sailing boats in Hong Kong. In 1968, on a lengthy family trip south of Hong Kong’s marine borders to Australia, the Deng’s boat encountered issues and broke down on the shores of Australia’s west coast.

Unable to fund a plane journey back to Hong Kong, the Deng family began working part-time at an Australian restaurant to raise funds to return to Hong Kong. In 1970, Deng was able to return home to his neighbourhood in Jordan after a two-year tenure in Australia, he decided to open a tea stall to sell silk-sock milk tea, Chinese tea mixed with locally produced Hong Kong milk.

To commemorate an unforgettable trip to Australia by boat, he named the restaurant “Australia Dairy Company.”

The Birth of “Australia Cow” and the Cha Chaan Tengs

Following the British invasion and colonization of Hong Kong in the 1850s, Western cuisine was only a delicacy for the taste and tongues of the upper-class British at serviced restaurants.

The income of the impoverished lower-class of Chinese in Hong Kong were relegated to the neighbourhood cha chaan teng (茶餐廳 / tea restaurant), an affordable form of Western food in the city for high-dining-hungry foodies.

In the 1920s, according to research in 2018, a meal at a Western restaurant could cost up to HK$10, whilst a working local Hong Konger earned between HK$12.50 and HK$50 per month.

Common local ingredients and seasonings were used to imitate Western cooking methods for cheap and fast “Western” food with local Cantonese characteristics. Favourites include the heavily imitated silk-sock milk tea, egg, ham and corned beef sandwiches, spring rolls, creamy soup with macaroni and sliced ham, Hong Kong-style French toast, and chow fan.

After World War II and the Japanese occupation of the city, Hong Kong culture saw a heavy influence in imported British culture, including penetration of British culinary traditions in Hong Kong cafés. Hong Kongers began to add milk to eat, savouring cakes, enjoying scrambled eggs with buns, and eating macaroni pasta.

Cha chaan teng’s grew in popularity in the 1960s with rising lower-class incomes rendering “Western food”’ affordable for many Hong Kongers. Café’s such as Australia Dairy Company, Cheung Heung Tea Restaurant in Kennedy Town, Hoi An Café in Sheung Wan, and Lan Fong Yuen in Central sprung up to cater to Hong Kongers with a taste for Western at a price of Cantonese.

An Intriguing Business Model

Despite running for over 50 years, Australia Dairy Company has not run a single advertisement in print or online media, relying initially on word-of-mouth advertising and now a strong legacy amongst cha chaan teng fans.

With a mantra for ordering, eating, and leaving quickly, the efficiency of the café can be explained by a long-reported trained attitude of many of the serving staff to be rude or impolite to sitting customers. Whilst not factually reported and remaining a rumour, and efficient service at the café goes down to how the business model and restaurant is set up.

The café is divided into five departments, the customer floor, a water bar, stewed egg section, a workshop and dishwashing, with each department having a dedicated supervisor.

There are an estimated 20 floor servicemen working during a day-time service session and more than 10 men behind the bar organizing orders. Except for the famous “dishwashing sister” who traipses around the restaurant floor with a mob and bucket, all staff hired are men, a reported purposeful move by the Deng family to prevent “awkward collisions” of female staff with male patrons.

Due to the heavy workload and pressured nature of working at Australia Cow, the staff are paid on average a monthly salary between HK$18,000 and HK$20,000. Waiters and cooks are given eight to 10 days of holiday at the end of each year.