Natalie Tong’s Bakery Business Flatlines After Initial Hype

Leaving TVB in 2022, Best Actress winner Natalie Tong (唐詩詠) chose to commit her time to various pursuits including script writing, charitable causes and also filmed variety shows. Recently exploring the entrepreneurial route, the actress started a 700-square-foot bakery with Japanese-style toasts and croissants as its signature product, achieving thrilling success with herself as the face of the brand!

Opened to Great Interest

With a monthly rental of 60,000 HKD at the high-energy Causeway Bay location, Natalie took a hands-on approach and often appeared at her shop to handle bakes and personally serve customers, successfully leveraging her celebrity and online word-of-mouth to produce long queues of customers who had to wait for hours in line.

With business thriving, the shop reportedly had to double its daily production from 500 to 1000 items, which were quickly sold out, testifying to Natalie’s star appeal, while every customer had to be limited to five loaves, with a maximum of four groups of customers in the shop at any time. There was even a post on the bakery’s IG page which cautioned customers from reserving their spot in the queue using chairs, bags and haversacks

Upgrades to Luxurious Residence at Mid-Levels

Recently, Natalie was exposed to have moved from her Seaview Garden home into the luxurious 2,000 square-foot Branksome Grande apartment at Mid-Levels which charges 120k monthly for a 3-bedroom unit, leading netizens to speculate if the bakery business earned that much, or if the actress might be in a new romance.

Meanwhile, the popularity of her 33 cubread bakery appeared to have taken a downward spiral recently, with no queues observed outside the shop, in a stark contrast to its initial hype.

A netizen who visited the bakery shared that there were few customers and Natalie was also nowhere in the shop. “There were no queues unlike what I had anticipated, maybe it’s because the weather is just so-so, perhaps I’m lucky,” she wrote. Other netizens called the bread “ridiculously expensive”, while more commented that while Hong Kongkers were keen to check out the hype, they would just as quickly look for “more practical” options; making the 50HKD price tag per square loaf “too costly” for many to afford.

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