For pioneering the SLOW movement in Hong Kong
“Organic food ain’t supposed to taste so good!” is the tongue-in-cheek tagline on the Locofama website. And yet, the Locofama Group in Hong Kong is out to change that. With restaurants and concept stores LOCOFAMA, SOHOFAMA and SUPAFOOD under its belt, the Group is aiming to bring organic food to the mainstream. LOCOFAMA serves the health-conscious in Sai Ying Pun, serving delicious and organic bites and dishes all day, concerned with offering food at its nutritional and palatable peak, from Hong Kong’s many, vibrant local farms. Then there’s SOHOFAMA, where the urban farming meets comfort Chinese food: focusing on perfectly and carefully balancing the old and new, while of course, keeping health in mind. And finally, there’s SUPAFOOD, with a bold mission: to reinvent fast food—to make it healthier, cheaper, and more convenient.
The mastermind behind these concept stores is none other than Larry Tang. These organic farm-to-table restaurants have paved the way for the Sustainable Lifestyle of Organic Wellness (SLOW) movement in Hong Kong, and Larry is well-known for innovating creative and crowd-appealing F&B events to bring the health-conscious, sustainability-conscious community in Hong Kong together, but that’s not all Larry can do. In Singapore, he runs Restart, and was the Managing Director for Publicis Groupe’s Digitas and Razorfish, the world’s two largest digital marketing agency networks. With over 15 years of advertising industry experience, Larry is one of the most sought-after branding and digital marketing consultants in the tech and startup community within the Greater China and Asia-Pacific region.
So how did he end up starting the Locofama Group? How did he go from startups and digital marketing to local farms and slow, nutritional and healthy food? Larry says that the major turning point happened when he was working in a high-level role overlooking the Asia Pacific market. He’d gotten to a point in his career where he felt like he couldn’t grow anymore, so he wanted to do something on his own. Eventually, he opened his own marketing agency and travelled the world for two years, and during that time he reflected on happiness and wanting to find purpose in life. By chance, in 2013, he walked past a vacant retail space in Sai Ying Pun, and had a vision of a health store on one side and a cafe on the other. (For him, healthy eating mattered because he did a lot of research on what caused cancer after his father and a few close friends were diagnosed, and found out that among other things, poor diet was a significant factor.) With a good price on the rental and a few friends who were interested in the concept, he brought it to life, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Today, with new, exciting projects on the way, and an ever-expanding portfolio of concept stores, Larry is hoping to bring his vision to life at a larger scale, to continue growing and making a positive difference in the community… all while making sure it’s delicious too.