By Huang Lijie

Mr George Quek is the founder of the home-grown BreadTalk group and has won numerous awards such as Entrepreneur of the Year.

But the popular pork floss buns that made the bakery chain's reputation was not his idea.

It was his wife of 23 years, Katherine, who came up with the best-selling bun. Inspired by the pork floss porridge she ate as a child, she decided to pair the meat floss with sweet egg cream and soft white bread.

When it was introduced in 2000, the bun sparked an immediate craze among diners and a copycat war among competitors.

More than 1.3 million Flosss buns were sold in its first year of sales and it remains the bakery's top selling item.

Mrs Quek, who is in her early 40s, is deputy chairman of the group and oversees its research and development department charged with coming up with new products for the group, which includes the Toast Box chain of eateries and Food Republic food courts.

Indeed, Mr Quek, 53, says his wife deserves more recognition than he has given her for her contributions to the company, currently a food and beverage empire spanning 12 countries with more than 300 bakeries, food courts and restaurants.

He admits sheepishly: 'I make it a point to recognise and praise my staff for their work, but because she is my wife and we are so close, I sometimes take her for granted and forget to thank her.'

The group saw its revenue grow by 35.5 per cent to a high of $212.2 million last year, from $156.6 million in 2007.

Mrs Quek has always been there for her husband and was literally his 'right-hand woman'' in the early years of their business partnership.

Their first food venture in 1986 was a pushcart business selling dragon beard candy in a Taipei department store. He made the candy on the spot, she packed the confection of sugared flour threads.

In the beginning, business was slow and they suffered cash-flow problems.

She says in mellifluous Mandarin: 'Those were actually some of the happiest times of my life. Yes, we worked long hours, we were physically tired and we led simple lives, but it was also very fulfilling.

'We just focused on working towards a bright future.'

She adds: 'I had no doubt then that he would be successful because he was very hardworking, full of ideas and willing to listen and learn.'

However, she is modest about her achievements and content to stand in the shadow of her husband.

She says: 'He is the one who leads the company, talks business and makes the big decisions. I handle the small things, mainly back-end work such as product development and staff training.'

Mr Quek adds quickly: 'But if the small things are not done well, I cannot achieve big things. Beyond product innovation, she is also involved in concept development and even the design of our shops.'

Born Lee Lih Leng, Mrs Quek grew up in a kampung in Hougang, with two older sisters and an older brother. Her father was a ship builder and her mother a housewife.

After studying at Ahmad Ibrahim Secondary School, she enrolled in part-time oil painting classes at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts.

She also took up a part-time job as an artist at a handicraft company that sold craftwork such as engraved pewter ware.

Mr Quek was her supervisor at the handicraft company. They hit it off from the start and dated for more than two years. They got engaged in 1986 and left for Taipei where he had started a small-scale export business in Taiwan-made souvenirs and handicraft.

He had left Singapore a year earlier to study at an art institute in Taipei but he did not have enough money for the school fees so he turned to running a business to support himself.

She says: 'The initial move was not easy because I was going to a foreign place where I had no friends. But George felt that there were business opportunities in Taiwan.'

On the advice of a Taiwanese friend, the couple decided to also set up a stall selling dragon beard candy because it was a novelty in Taiwan then. Mr Quek had learnt to make the snack while working at the handicraft store in Singapore.

The food business got off to a shaky start, but with loans from friends in Taiwan, they managed to keep their candy business going. Six months later, queues started forming and the candy business expanded to five kiosks with total monthly sales of more than $240,000.

The couple dreamt of making it big and living in a beautiful big house. She says: 'On our days off from work, we would visit residential areas with beautiful houses to motivate ourselves.'

They went on to open a stall in a shopping mall selling Singaporean food such as satay and nonya kueh. She made special trips back to Singapore to learn to make these dishes from hawkers and home cooks. The stall, named Singa, spawned 21 outlets.

The couple were frugal. They located their makeshift office in an alley next to their single-storey house and their home kitchen doubled as the central kitchen for their food stalls.

In 1992, they decided to sell most of the shares in their businesses in Taiwan and return to Singapore to be with their ageing parents.

Back home, Mr Quek seized opportunities in the food-court business by opening Food Junction with a few Taiwanese partners in 1993. She was a director in the company.

Because the couple were starting their family then, she had to juggle work with family. Fortunately, her mother-in-law was around to help her care for their three children. Daughter Weirou is now 16 and sons Jonathan and Matthew are 15 and 13 respectively.

As his business grew, she took on heavier responsibilities at home. She took care of the children so that he could travel overseas for work.

Then in 2000, the astute businessman, inspired by the chic bakeries he saw in Japan, Taiwan and Hong Kong, decided to open BreadTalk, so named because they want their breads to 'speak' to their customers. The couple left Food Junction together.

Now, she keeps the offerings at the BreadTalk bakeries fresh by rolling out new creations with catchy names every six months. Recent additions include Curry Dozo, a Japanese-inspired fried curry chicken bun, and Frentaigo, a French baguette topped with Japanese mentaiko (marinated pollock roe).

She also creates new confectionery brands for the group, most recently The Icing Room.

The bijoux cake boutique which opened last year at Jurong Point lets customers personalise their cakes on-site with icing and other edible decorations.

It is so popular that a second branch is opening soon at the shopping mall 313@Somerset in Orchard Road.

The coffee and toast chain, Toast Box, is also her concept.

Mrs Quek says: 'I love BreadTalk's thick toast. I have it for breakfast every day and I felt it should reach out to a larger audience. I thought it would go well with a traditional cup of coffee too.'

Toast Box, which was launched in 2005, has spawned more than 20 outlets in Singapore and more than 10 overseas in countries such as China and the Philippines.

While he is the boss at work, she is the one who calls the shots at home.

She is the disciplinarian and she monitors the children's schoolwork.

She says: 'I'm not a strict mother, but I have my expectations. I expect them to get As in school. But I let them pursue their own interests.'

When it comes to the design of their house, what she says counts too.

The family moved from a semidetached house in Hougang to a bungalow with a swimming pool in central Singapore in 2006.

A devout Buddhist, she had him convert the karaoke room into a room for her Buddhist altar. She also convinced him to let her have a small vegetable patch in the garden where she grows xiao bai cai, spring onion and chilli.

But her art collector husband puts his foot down when it comes to the paintings displayed in the house. The walls of the house, which is decorated with clean, simple lines and natural wood furnishings, are adorned with his collection of Chinese paintings, including works by renowned Chinese painters Qi Baishi and Li Keran.

Mrs Quek, who has been attending private classes in Chinese calligraphy and Chinese painting for many years, has tried to get her paintings up on the walls but to no avail.

She says: 'He says my paintings cannot compare with the masters' so I cannot hang them up.

'So I hung one, an ink painting of a fish, in the toilet instead, because guests are likely to visit the toilet and they can admire my work there.'

She adds: 'I am practising hard and I have my eyes on a wall in the living room where I hope to hang my painting one day.'

Family time is important for the couple and they try to spend weekends with their children cycling at East Coast Park, taking a walk in the Botanic Gardens or trying out new eateries.

The close-knit family was affected by Mr Quek's drink-driving incident in 2004 when he crashed his Porsche into a stationary police car at a roadblock. He was fined $4,000 and banned from driving for 21/2 years.

She says of the incident: 'It was tough for the children because some of their friends, being children, said things that weren't sensitive.

'But he has learnt from that episode that he needs to be responsible for his actions.'

That is as much as they are willing to talk about the matter. As far as possible, they prefer to keep their family life separate from their public work life.

She says: 'Previously, we would talk business all the time. Even when we were on holiday with the family, we would be analysing other retail stores.

'But we realised that that wasn't healthy, so we slowly learnt to stop talking about work outside the office.'

And after more than 20 years as partners in work and life, the bond between them remains strong.

She makes cards for his birthdays and he continues to romance her.

For their recent 23rd wedding anniversary, he took her to dinner at Morton's of Chicago steakhouse where he surprised her with a bouquet of red roses and a card that had their faces superimposed onto the bodies of Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung from a scene in the movie, In The Mood For Love.

She says: 'I often joke that in my next life, I want to be his wife again.'

This article was first published in The Straits Times.