Back in July, Charmaine Hui, daughter of Hong Kong actor Benz Hui, told 8days.sg she had “big plans” for her home-based bakery, Bakeaholic. We’d sampled her yummy lemon cookies and brownie cupcakes at her family’s Upper Thomson terrace house, which serves as their second home outside of Hong Kong (Charmaine was born in Singapore because of her Singaporean mum, while dad is a Singaporean PR).

Now, the enterprising 23-year-old is already setting those plans in motion — with her own cafe slated to open at year’s end in the northern part of the island. The Hong Kong Baptist University grad had initially planned to visit Singapore with her mum for just a couple of months during Chinese New Year. Instead, she ended up being stuck here much longer due to the pandemic. This also meant she had to shelve plans to pursue a Masters degree in the UK due to safety concerns. To kill time, she started baking and selling her cakes from home.

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After 8days.sg’s article on Bakeaholic was published in June, Charmaine saw an influx of orders on Bakeaholic, averaging 30 orders a week. The increased volume eventually began to overwhelm her — she remained an “almost one-man team” in her narrow home kitchen — so she started looking into renting a commercial kitchen to ramp up production.

“During my search, I found out that renting a commercial kitchen would cost almost the same as renting a shophouse space,” says Charmaine. “That made me think: why not get started on my dream to open a cafe-bakery now?” Over the last few months, Charmaine busied herself with running Bakeaholic online and finding a suitable location for her future cafe. She finally secured the lease not long ago.

“I told myself I’d open a cafe one day but never in a million years did I think things would happen so quickly!,” she says, adding that she didn’t anticipate that she’d be setting up shop this year. “I honestly didn’t think that ‘one day’ would come so soon!” she adds with a laugh. On setting up a cafe during the pandemic, she confidently says: “It feels like a crazy decision, but I’m not too nervous about it. The area I’m opening in is really in need of a cafe, in my opinion.”

After almost nine months of being separated from dad Benz due to the global pandemic, Charmaine and her Singaporean mother Angeli were finally able to arrange for a flight back to Hong Kong on the last day of September.

“COVID-19 has really been a pain for our family. I haven’t been able to see my grandpa and dad for so long — we’ve never been separated for this long!” She pauses, before adding that another big regret for her was that she was not present when her childhood dog passed away in Hong Kong, during the circuit breaker period in April. “Thinking about it now, I started to bake as a coping mechanism after I lost my dog, Bear Bear. I wanted to distract myself from the grief.” She had adopted Bear Bear from SPCA HK 15 years ago, when the border collie mix was just three months old.

“I guess many bad things happened in 2020 for most people, including me. But one good thing [that came] out of all this is that Bakeaholic [was born],” she adds with a smile. With her now in Hong Kong, Bakeaholic is currently taking a break on orders, until she returns to Singapore in November.

With Benz still working on filming projects in mainland China, it might be another month before she gets to see her father in the flesh, though. However, he’s 100 percent behind his daughter’s entrepreneurial endeavors.

“My dad has always been super supportive with whatever I do — as long as it’s legal,” jokes Charmaine. “When I told him I was serious about starting my own cafe, he told me to just go for it.” Despite his hectic schedule as a TVB actor, Benz told his daughter that he will be there to kick off her cafe’s opening, which Charmaine hopes will be before Christmas.

As Charmaine will be in Hong Kong till November, she’ll be handling much of the prep work remotely before the cafe opening. However, she’s managed to find a partner based in Singapore — a family friend — to work with her on the cafe’s operations.

Charmaine’s partner will be handingly all the physical aspects of overseeing the renovations, while she will be handling the menu, designs and marketing. “Thank god for Zoom and smart phones, otherwise it would be impossible to go back to Hong Kong while trying to prepare for the cafe!” Charmaine is also in the midst of hiring a chef for the cafe, if things go smoothly, she hopes to eventually hire a larger kitchen team.

Charmaine intends to keep the name Bakeaholic for the cafe, and is working towards a space that’s clean and simple — all baking will be done on-site and there will be an estimated 30 to 40 seats. Expect her signature brownie and matcha cakes, along with her lemon madeleines and banana walnut loaves to be on the menu. For drinks, there’ll be cold brew and specialty coffee, along with a line of matcha lattes using different types of plant-based milks.

Prices are unconfirmed, but Charmaine reckons they’ll be around the same price as the current Bakeaholic menu or slightly higher, to account for the additional running costs.

As for the location of her cafe? Charmaine prefers to keep it cryptic, though she adds that it’s a place she’s “very familiar with.” The design of the space is handled by interior design studio YWA Studios, which Charmaine applauds for being “super talented and assuring”.

“They are one of the reasons I feel so confident going back to Hong Kong in the midst of all this prep work — because I know I am in good hands!”

Charmaine hopes to soft-launch the cafe before its official opening at the end of the year. She muses: “Out of everything that has happened during this pandemic, Bakeaholic was something special. I’m just grateful and blessed for the overwhelming support I’ve received. Without my family, friends and customers, I wouldn’t be able to achieve one of my life goals so soon!”

Photos: Alvin Teo/8 Days, Charmaine Hui