Maxim’s journey from start-up to Hong Kong’s largest restaurant group

Maxim’s is well known in Hong Kong for its cake shops, moon cakes and dim sum, but it actually began life as a western restaurant 60 years ago, founded by S.T. Wu and his brother James in Central on the site where the Landmark now stands.

The brothers decided to set up their own establishment after often finding themselves seated next to the toilets in other restaurants because many owners at the time thought Chinese were not important customers.

From that single site the company has travelled a long way to become Hong Kong’s largest restaurant group. Now 50 per cent owned by Dairy Farm, part of the Jardine Matheson Group, the Wu family still runs the business, but makes use of its partner to secure prime locations for its restaurants.

A major turning point for the group came in 2000, when Michael Wu Wei-kuo, the grandson of the founder, brought expanded the group beyond Chinese restaurants and launched different brands featuring Japanese, Western, Thai and Vietnamese cuisines as well as many food products including moon cakes and other festive foods items.

Since that year, the company’s staff headcount and number of restaurants have doubled, and it now has more than 24,000 employees at over 900 outlets.