Ang Mo Liang Teh (or 紅毛涼茶) is a Singaporean bottle shop started by Jerry Yang, that specialises in local and imported craft beers at very affordable prices.

This is Part 2 of our two-part interview with Jerry, where we learnt more about Jerry's challenge of starting a business and weathering a pandemic.

Follow Ang Mo Liang Teh and Jerry's adventures: Website | Instagram | TikTok | Facebook

Part II — 危机 (Danger / Opportunity): Building a brand in the pandemic  

"The dream is to make craft beer accessible and affordable, with multiple outlets across various locations, making Ang Mo Liang Teh a brand that is synonymous with good craft beer and great customer service."

– Jerry Yang - owner of Ang Mo Liang Teh

We’ve previously explored what makes Ang Mo Liang Teh a unique part of Singapore’s craft beer landscape; grounded in local culture, flavours, and people. It’s all the more impressive since it was founded in 2020, right as everything plunged into chaos. Remember that first year in lockdown? You’ll probably remember how hard it was just to get by; let alone start a business.

The history of Ang Mo Liang Teh is the history of its founder, Jerry. It’s an amazing story of reinvention and perseverance, from setback to success, and hearing it, “危机” comes to mind: the Chinese characters for crisis. The first means “danger”. The second means “opportunity”. Ang Mo Liang Teh has seen plenty of challenges, and survived by making the best out of them.

This is a look into the grit, the gamble, and the sacrifice it takes to launch a craft beer bar in the middle of a world-ending pandemic. 

"I’ve never been the corporate-corporate kind of guy. Most people climb the corporate ladder. And by my age now, they should be earning a very comfortable amount… 

But I chose the tough life."

I first found Jerry via the most renowned platform for connecting with craft beer experts: LinkedIn (I am a “corporate-corporate” kind of guy after all). At first, I thought I’d reached the wrong guy — expecting, naively, that the founder of a craft beer store would have a specific kind of pedigree: say, experience at a regional brewery, or at a big-name F&B / FMCG brand. 

Instead, Jerry is a / an:

None of this makes sense until you go down to his shop, sit down with him, and open your first beer. But once you do — you see how all this feeds directly into the unique brew that is Ang Mo Liang Teh.

As we talk about life before Ang Mo Liang Teh, what immediately becomes clear is that Jerry’s used to bootstrapping: using what little he has, to make as much as he can. His first foray into entrepreneurship — Quickienomics.com, an e-learning platform started in 2011 — shows the self-starting spirit that defines his craft beer venture today. As he tells it: “We had limited resources and money, and close to no guidance… so everything was self-taught, including how to code.” This early crash course paid off. Jerry built Ang Mo Liang Teh’s website from scratch, a decade later.

Two beers in, I realise Jerry has a certain hunger behind his easygoing air. Way before the term “hustle” went mainstream, he wore multiple hats throughout his career: after Quickienomics.com, he joined a startup, C 7 Traders, to be a trader — but swiftly got roped into the management team instead. “So I did BD, web design, many other things,” he laughs, “it really became more like five roles.”

The last — but most important — insight I learn about Jerry is that he doesn’t quit. Quickienomics.com wound down, despite his best efforts to fundraise. C 7 Traders was acquired and disbanded. So he went to business school — while juggling a separate diploma in digital marketing, raising a newborn child, and getting a new job in F&B marketing at the same time. After 9 years of the startup hustle, things were finally looking up again for Jerry.

The year was 2020.

When Covid hit, Jerry’s salary was cut; delayed; then eventually stopped entirely. So he quit. Like many of us, he turned to drinking — but in a different way. By this time, he had slowly come to know and love craft beer through the job he just left, where he had been meeting suppliers, attending tasting sessions, and launching a new business model. Jerry realised that he already had all he needed to enter the industry on his own terms.

Jerry’s first taste of the craft beer world had evolved into his passion. Now, it would be his lifeline.

And so as the virus spread, people locked themselves indoors, and F&B businesses across the island closed shop — Jerry headed in the exact opposite direction. He did the math, spoke to his family, then pooled the last of his savings to set up shop close to a hawker stall at Alexandra Food Village (AV).

Though Jerry didn’t realise it then, his decision to start at AV grounds Ang Mo Liang Teh squarely in Singapore’s beer heritage — Alexandra Road is also home to Singapore’s first breweries: the Malayan (a.k.a. Tiger) and Archipelago Breweries, dating back to the early 1930s. You may already be familiar with their modern incarnation: Asia Pacific Breweries.

Ang Mo Liang Teh was born.

Ang Mo Liang Teh's original location at Bukit Merah.

The late Steve Jobs said, “you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.”

Jerry seems to have followed this advice. Ang Mo Liang Teh isn’t his first go at entrepreneurship, so it was clearly an informed choice. But decisions that are this risky — some might say reckless! — ultimately come down to a gut call. He lays this out in simpler terms:–

Screw it, the world’s ending, let’s try this entrepreneurship thing one last time. That was really the mentality.

You don't do, you never know. So really, my thought was, I’ve allocated enough finances to run this thing. Let’s do it. Just whack.  

Of course, it’s calculated risk. But after you do your planning, everything is execution. Ideas alone are worthless. Thinking alone is worthless. You have to just do.

He’s continued to "whack", execute, and do his way through the turmoil of the years since. Ang Mo Liang Teh celebrated its 1st anniversary by scrambling to move, after realising that his lease at Bukit Merah would not be renewed.

"That was a stressful moment for me, cuz I had to relocate, update addresses for everything. Going into a new location also means new marketing materials and new customers."

Turning crisis into opportunity yet again, he shifted to his current location in Eon Shenton; now with his own beer taps and a larger space for guests. It has since proved to be a decent staging ground for Ang Mo Liang Teh, which hosted an impressive string of partnerships and events in 2022.

As much as Jerry has undoubtedly earned his own success, no man is an island. And if it takes a village to raise a child, who does it take to build something like Ang Mo Liang Teh?

Jerry’s quick to credit the support of his suppliers, and everyone who led him towards craft beer. But just like Vin Diesel from the Fast & Furious movies, his strongest supporters have been friends and family. “I remember my very first day of operations,” he recalls, “I just posted something on Facebook, and friends that I hadn’t met for very long just decided to pop by and support. And they didn’t even ask for discounts!” 

As the night turns late and our beer cans pile up, he reflects on the cost of pursuing your dreams. “On hindsight, I think it's quite crazy. And really,” he says, gesturing at the bar around us, “this could never be possible without my wife and my family.” Walking away from cushy corporate salaries means he can’t give his parents an allowance, at least for the time being. “Sometimes in our Asian culture we feel a bit bad right. Paiseh, because your parents raised you but you aren’t able to pay them back.” It also means he and his wife are raising their child on a single source of income. As he puts it: “I'm very fortunate that she's able to ‘tank’ the family and for allowing me to pursue this entrepreneurship dream.”

In a world of Crazy Rich Asians and “nepo babies”, Jerry’s dreams have a deadline.

“Having a kid — it's just very hard to keep pursuing entrepreneurship because I'm not from a rich family. Neither do I have a huge amount of investments or inheritance that I can just ‘throw’. So circumstances for the common everyday man is like that lah.”

That’s why, despite everything he’s overcome so far, Jerry is convinced that Ang Mo Liang Teh will be his last shot to run his own business:

"My assurance to my wife is: give me some time, give me a few years. Let me try to make this a success, and in the unfortunate event that this thing doesn't work out — yeah, this will be the end. I will have to go back to employment lah, because our circumstances are very different."

Still, he’s not the kind to wallow in self-pity or self-importance. Jerry readily acknowledges that what he’s been through so far is “nothing compared to people in the beer industry here for 15 years — they have seen some shit!”

On his part, Jerry’s more than ready to take Ang Mo Liang Teh to even greater heights in the next 15 years, given the chance. “I think maybe my dream is to have a full-fledged, proper craft beer bar,” he confesses after some prodding. “Lots of people ask me — why did I choose this place; why is it so small? Sometimes it’s very sian to answer. It’s just prudence and spending within my capabilities. If I had millions of dollars today, what’s stopping me from opening 3 or 4 outlets all around Singapore? The dream is to make craft beer accessible and affordable, with multiple outlets across various locations, making Ang Mo Liang Teh a brand that is synonymous with good craft beer and great customer service.”

For now though, he’s squarely focused on the present. “It’s really 一步走一步 (one step at a time),” he says. That’s a sensible attitude given the crazy times we’re in. And there’s just one last step before we end off for the night: to find out what his favourite beer is.

Jerry cracks the next can (and a smile) open. “Right now it’s the Mjave Ca from Megobrebi Brewery in Georgia.” It’s like nothing else I’ve had before — just a rich slush of fruity flavour made with real, in-season berries. Rare, authentic, and an experience to savour: it’s the perfect way to close our conversation.

@verrine