#beer uncle

[goodnightngoth]

are my beer uncle girls in the room tonight??? make some noise

[thenighttcat]

It’s 6.08pm on a Sunday evening and I’m waiting for Mum and Dad at Beer Uncle, a restaurant whose logo is a face with wavy beer foam hair and that has a whole wall of refrigerators filled with at least a hundred different varieties of Asian beer.

I don’t like waiting, but it’s been a packed day and I appreciate this little pocket of rest. Breathing space — as Miyazaki liked to advocate in his art. Besides, it’s not a bad place to relax. A down-to-earth establishment, an amiable owner (the beer uncle himself), a convivial atmosphere and, in the background, strains of acoustic music intermingled with the lively conversations of young people in Mandarin.

I don’t like waiting. Yet life has a way of making us learn the lessons we don’t like, and we are repeat students until we pass.

I don’t like waiting. It’s too uncertain — wondering how things would pan out, wondering what you should do, beating yourself up for whatever you have or have not done.

I don’t like waiting, because there is no deadline to waiting, no end in sight. I really don’t like waiting.

[lasterday]

[thebeerhawker-blog]

One month after losing Beer Uncle... what next?

Beer Uncle passed away about a month ago, on 24 April 2013.

His passing was even noted in local Chinese newspaper Shin Min Daily, his wake having attended by regulars both locals as well as expatriates who hail from all over the world.

Beer Uncle's death was particularly painful as it was only recently that we really started to communicate a lot more as family. In fact, it was only when we started The Good Beer Company that we spent a lot of time together. But as much as it was a horrible personal loss, losing him is devastating for the business. The truth is that while The Good Beer Company was my baby and my idea, Beer Uncle represented the heart and soul of the business. The Good Beer Company will never be same again.

The question is: how can The Good Beer Company continue without the legacy of Beer Uncle?

In that, there's a lot of thinking to do.

[thebeerhawker-blog]

More than a Beer Uncle.

Beer Uncle, as many of you have found out by now, is really my uncle. His real name is Goh Koon Hong, and he's my late father's younger brother. He's the only uncle on my father's side I've ever known - the rest of my father's siblings having died during World War II.

I'm always very heartened by the comments I hear about him - many of our patrons have nothing but praise for him. Thank you for that. So I thought I'd take a little time here to share more about Beer Uncle.

When I first started on the idea of The Good Beer Company, Beer Uncle and I weren't too close. My grandma - his mother - had passed away some time back so we had less reason to see each other. But the bigger reason - which we didn't know at that time - was that Beer Uncle had become pretty much a lonely hermit, as he was embarrassed about his vocation. He had become an estate cleaner, working for one of the town councils. He was originally working as an admin staff for them, but got transferred to doing maintenance and cleaning some time later.

Yup. A 63-year old man, pretty much forced into a filthy job alongside our younger, more illustrious foreign labor. I suspect it was done to help balance out the local/foreign worker quota restrictions, but I don't have proof.

As you can imagine, he didn't quite enjoy his line of work. So despite his reservations, he hopped onto the idea of working with me as a hawker assistant selling beer in Chinatown. If nothing else, he can get away from the filth and sometimes dangerous work.

Five months down the road, Beer Uncle, as he is now affectionately known, is promoting and recommending beer to curious patrons. He jokes and banters with customers, and many even call him the unofficial mascot of The Good Beer Company.

He's really more than that. This may surprise you, but most don't know that Beer Uncle is also a shareholder of the business. This means he does have input into how we conduct the business, what beers we pick, and in which direction the business grows.

We've had potential distributors come in to discuss business who don't acknowledge Beer Uncle's existence even if he stood in their face, because they think he's merely some elderly hired help. These people, we choose not to work with - and I don't care how good their beers are. I bet they'd be surprised if they knew the reason why we snub them.

On the other hand, we've had awesome business partners who treat him like the precious elderly gentleman that he is. And it's not even because they know he is family... that's just the way they are, and that's how they treat people. It just shows their character. And these people, we work with.

Beer Uncle is family, business mascot... and more.