Tzu Wei Chen Food Co. Ltd. based in Tainan City may be an unfamiliar name to most consumers, but "Black Bridge"--the trademark and brand name of the company's products--has become synonymous with sausages in Taiwan. For several decades now, before every traditional festival, long lines have formed outside the doors of Black Bridge outlets as eager customers wait for a taste of the famous sausage.
The Black Bridge legend began some 50 years ago when Chen Wen-hei opened a tiny stall beside an asphalt-paved wooden bridge spanning the Tainan Canal. Like most people his age, Chen, now 76, worked at all sorts of jobs to help his family after completing elementary school. At the age of 16, he began working at a meat processing shop in Tainan. After working there for two years and learning the tricks of the trade, he opened his own shop beside the "black bridge," devoting himself to making shredded pork and jerky.
Chen's business venture was interrupted by compulsory military service, but shortly after fulfilling his obligation to the armed forces in 1957, Chen, then 25, returned to the side of the bridge and opened another shop dedicated to making pork floss for wholesale customers. The equipment for production was simple: the pork was heated in an oven and then finely chopped. Although he was able to support his family by working long hours, lean economic times prevented sales from taking off. Undaunted, Chen searched for a breakthrough product. Inspiration struck when he observed that all the products then on the sausage market were dry and salty. Seeing an opportunity, Chen and his wife Lin Jhu set to work to find a way to improve on the traditional sausage.
Succulent and Secret
Black Bridge vice general manager Robert Chen, the youngest of Chen Wen-hei's four children, explains that traditional sausages were preserved through drying and salt curing because refrigerators were uncommon. Bucking market trends, the elder Chen set out to create an innovative new sausage. He insisted on using only the freshest cuts from the hind legs of pigs. He stuck to a "golden rule" of using 70 percent lean meat and 30 percent fat. Instead of drying and salting the meat, Chen Wen-hei developed a proprietary curing method to keep the meat succulent and moist. A secret blend of spices and herbs was developed to give the sausage a unique flavor. To top it all off, he refused to use the fillers other manufacturers employed to add bulk to their products while cutting costs.
Chen Wen-hei's new sausage, though still made of pork, was an instant hit. "When a sweet and juicy sausage made with fresh pork hit the market, you can imagine how it shook things up," Robert Chen says. "The traditional dry, salty sausage was immediately replaced and Black Bridge became the most popular product on the market." Although the small operation did not even have a name, everyone in Tainan soon knew that "the shop beside the black bridge" was the place to go for sausage.
Black Bridge vice general manager Robert Chen has adopted aggressive marketing strategies instead of relying on word of mouth as his father did. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)
In 1963, Chen Wen-hei moved the operation to Haian Road in the city's busiest marketplace. Six years later, demand had grown so much that he had to move the production facility twice, finally landing in 1979 at its current location in Tainan's Anping Industrial Park.
Black Bridge's reputation spread and the sausage became a popular "souvenir" for tourists visiting Tainan. In the latter half of the 1960s, after touring the city's historical sites, visitors began to insist on stopping at Black Bridge before heading home. Coping with the tourist tide was not always easy, because every half hour, buses filled with 40 tourists would arrive. At a time when the electronic calculator was still unheard of, Black Bridge employees had to calculate the mushrooming sales with the help of an abacus.
Certified Quality
Black Bridge's emphasis on product quality has ensured the brand's continued prosperity. Since 1987, all of Tzu Wei Chen's meat products have carried the Council of Agriculture's Certified Agricultural Standards seal of quality. In 2002, the factory was certified as compliant with the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) standards, an internationally recognized set of criteria for ensuring hygiene and safety in the production of food.
Robert Chen thinks that in addition to its reputation for quality, Black Bridge also owes its success to Taiwan's rapid economic development, which led to greater purchasing power and the widespread use of household refrigerators to store fresh meat.
After several expansions, Black Bridge's automated factory now occupies about 10,000 square meters. The company operates 14 shops in Taipei, Taichung, Tainan and Kaohsiung, and has 10 authorized outlets in other cities. Black Bridge employs some 160 workers on the production line, 40 in administration and logistics and another 100 salespeople in its shops. The company produces and sells more than 4,000 tons of sausages a year, making it Taiwan's leading sausage brand. Although exact figures are hard to come by, market watchers have estimated that Black Bridge controls some 50 percent of the local sausage market.
According to Black Bridge marketing manager Frances Yeh, the company's sausage offerings constitute 90 percent of its earnings, with the remaining 10 percent coming from other products such as pork floss and other processed pork or beef products. However, while many competing products can be easily purchased in supermarkets, except for refrigerated sausages and ham, Black Bridge products can only be found in the company's own shops and authorized dealers. Yeh explains that supermarkets require processed meat products to have a shelf life of 360 days, but with current technology and barring the use of artificial preservatives, Black Bridge's products can only last 180 days. "If putting our products on the shelves of supermarkets means that we must use preservatives or compromise quality in any way, we'll have to do without the supermarkets," she says.
Vote of Confidence
Black Bridge's road to success was not always smooth. One of the hardest hits Taiwan's meat market has taken was the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in the mid-1990s. "For months, it was like nobody was eating any pork," says Chen Shih-wei, section chief of Black Bridge's Production Management Department. "Our production shrank to about a tenth of the normal quantity." But Robert Chen says the disruption brought on by foot-and-mouth disease actually helped the company in the long run. "People may be scared away for a while, but they can't remove pork from their diet forever," he says. "When they eventually return to the market, they only go to the most reputable brand."
Founder Chen Wen-hei, center, and his wife Lin Jhu, left, at the Black Bridge shop they opened in 1963 on Tainan's Haian Road. (Courtesy of Tzu Wei Chen Food Co.)
Black Bridge was obviously one such brand. While many meat producers closed down during the outbreak, Black Bridge won consumer confidence and recovered within several months.
All in the Family
Chen Wen-hei and his wife handled everything from production to cultivating new flavors for the three decades before Robert Chen came on board. Robert, who majored in Spanish and loves languages and the cultural heritage behind them, was at first not exactly enthusiastic about making and selling sausages. He was later persuaded--or rather "recruited"--to provide a helping hand due to a personnel shortage at Black Bridge. However, even though he literally grew up surrounded by sausages, he was asked to start with an entry-level job in the factory and spent 10 years mastering every detail of the business, gradually working his way up to the decision-making level.
While both father and son insist on making only top-quality products, they have employed different marketing strategies. Chen Wen-hei pretty much relied on word of mouth. "The older generation had their own idea about how marketing should be done. Their method probably was a good one considering the environment then," the younger Chen says. "But as the business environment and consumer habits began to change, we needed to shift gears to keep up."
Compared with his father, Robert Chen has been much more aggressive in marketing the brand by talking to the media and purchasing television and magazine advertisements. The younger Chen has also been instrumental in placing products made by other companies in Black Bridge retail stores.
When analyzing the market, Robert Chen discovered that Black Bridge had many loyal customers between the ages of 40 and 60--people who grew up with Black Bridge sausages. The downside was that there were not enough younger ones. Thus, one of the younger Chen's marketing strategies has been to bring in foreign products to attract young consumers who are comfortable with Western food and do not have a lot of time to spend in the kitchen. In 2002, Black Bridge began offering products made by Johnsonville Sausage of the United States and by Italy's Volpi, which makes salami and prosciutto. However, according to marketing manager Frances Yeh, the sales of the foreign products have been mixed, with some performing extremely well in some shops and poorly in others.
All of the company's products pass through a metal detector to check for any particles inadvertently left by production equipment. (Photo by Huang Chung-hsin)
But the new products have had the positive side effect of attracting more young people to Black Bridge shops, thus introducing them to the company's domestically made products. Also, because Black Bridge products are popular with tourists from Hong Kong, the company is making plans to open its first overseas shop there.
No Compromise
Robert Chen has also been attempting to introduce new concepts to continue building the venerable brand. Instead of sticking to only meat products, the vice general manager wants to establish Black Bridge as a purveyor of other traditional Taiwanese snacks such as pineapple cakes and green bean cakes. However, Yeh says that Black Bridge will not compromise on quality and conducts intensive investigations on the history and production processes of outside manufacturers before allowing their products to be included for sale in the company's shops.
Judging by the fact that Black Bridge's share of Taiwan's processed meat market has steadily increased, Robert Chen's new approaches appear to be on the right track. However, while marketing strategies are mainly mapped out by the son, supervising production and developing new products are still carried out by the father. Chen Wen-hei develops new flavors and approves products created by the company's research and development team. "Like wine experts or perfume testers who have a high degree of sensitivity about such products, my father is gifted in evaluating the flavors of processed meat products," Robert Chen says. "It's difficult to explain, but everything he has OKed is bound to sell." According to Yeh, 17 of the 26 products in Black Bridge's product line were developed by Chen Wen-hei. The company's all-time bestseller is still the original sausage the founder developed 50 years ago.
The asphalt-paved wooden bridge has long been replaced by a cement one named the Annan Bridge. The automation of Black Bridge's production process, the quantity of products produced, its marketing strategies and many other things have also changed. But one thing that has not changed is the company's insistence on "using a good heart to make good sausage," as its slogan goes. Another thing that has remained the same for 50 years is the long lines of customers in front of Black Bridge shops, waiting for a taste of the famous sausage.
Write to Jim Hwang at jim@mail.gio.gov.tw