24 years in bird's nest.
Now in Singapore.
I've been eating bird's nest for as long as I can remember. It wasn't some fancy treat, just because it was always around. Every morning before school I'd have a bowl, and even after dinner as dessert. It was just breakfast.
My parents built their business in the bird's nest trade from nothing, moving up to a tonne a month at their busiest, which made them one of the bigger volume distributors around. The nest itself always came from Indonesia, where the vast majority of the world's bird's nest is produced, and I basically grew up around the factory visits, supplier meetings and industry events. So over the years I picked up the difference between nest that's actually good and nest that just has good marketing behind it.
We source from PT Adipurna Mranata Jaya (AMJ) in Indonesia, Export registration #001, founded in the late 1980s and one of the largest bird's nest producers in the world, with TUV and HACCP certifications. It's the same factory behind many leading names across Asia. My family has worked with them for years, and that kind of trust in a relationship isn't easy to achieve.
The thing that always got to me was this: the exact same nest, from the exact same factory, somehow costs so much more by the time it reaches people here. It's not any better, it's just because of everyone taking a cut along the way. Li Mei Yuan is my answer to that. Same quality, straight from the source, without all the markup. I want to build a brand that finally lets everyone enjoy true, authentic bird's nest without the usual hefty price.
