Gen-Z Bakers Keep 4 a.m. Schedules to Feed Sourdough Demand in Singapore

On opening day they arrived at 4am to cook the broth. Running on no sleep and racked with nerves, both forgot to season the broth with salt, resulting in bland-tasting noodles, an early setback for Ah Jie Hokkien Mee at a coffee shop in Ang Mo Kio Avenue 8.

A mid-February feature profiles a wave of millennials and Gen-Z founders leaving traditional jobs to start micro-bakeries and hawker stalls, noting that sourdough sits at the core of many micro-bakery lineups and that owners begin baking before dawn. That pre-dawn hustle shows up in actions as concrete as arriving at 4am to prepare broth and returning to the stall on days officially closed to prep ingredients for the next day.

Frying up a storm are two friends - Mr Teo Jun Jie, 27 and Mr Soh Ren Jie, 28, who teamed up to start Ah Jie Hokkien Mee at a coffee shop in Ang Mo Kio Avenue 8. Mr Teo learnt his skills working at a Hokkien mee stall for three years, and the pair initially worked from 8am to 10.30pm daily. In September, they hired a friend as a cook. This cut their working hours to 12 hours a day, and they could finally take turns to get a day off each week.

It took another two months for them to refine their broth, which uses fresh pork bones, along with Thai farmed prawns for flavour. Fresh pork bones and Thai farmed prawns go into the making of the broth at Ah Jie Hokkien Mee. For optimal quality, they use fresh pork belly, lard, squid and prawns, a combination the owners refined through trial and error after their first-day lesson in seasoning.

Across the micro-bakery and hawker profiles, the physical toll is explicit. “Our backs and legs ached and we had heat rash for the first few days when we wore long-sleeved shirts to try to protect our arms in the kitchen,” says Ms Siti, who runs a stall with Mr Chan. Their stall operates from Wednesdays to Mondays, 9.30am to 9.30pm, and is closed on Tuesdays. But Mr Chan returns to the stall on Tuesdays to prepare ingredients for the next day.

The couple’s business reached a financial milestone when “the stall broke even in January.” They hope to obtain halal certification and are planning to launch a second outlet later this year; their long-term goal is to have a chain of outlets. Customer response has been a motivator: “It is satisfying when customers come back and tell me they enjoy our fried rice and turn into our regulars,” Ms Siti says.

A Gen-Z foodpreneurs feature even includes the line “Slipped disc did not hold him back from starting a Hokkien mee stall,” underscoring the physical sacrifices behind these ventures. Photographed on Jan 20, 2025, the coverage carries the photo credit line: hkgenz22 ST20250120_202552800623 Ong Wee Jin / Hedy Khoo /.