BETTER TOGETHER

The food and beverage business has always been viewed as a predominantly male domain, although a new crop of young female duos is promising to remake the industry in their own image. By combining their Asian heritage with an international upbringing and a penchant for risktaking, these inspirational women are showing that when it comes to innovation, two minds are better than one

- Gavin Yeung

OLD WINE, YOUNG BLOOD

A cocktail pop-up set to the thumping beats of a DJ on the pool level of Soho House Hong Kong might not be the first image that comes to mind when it comes to a 181-year-old Chinese cooking wine, yet for 26-year-olds Elaine Chen and Maia Mah, respectively the regional director and creative director of Fukien Old Wine, it's exactly this sort of cognitive dissonance that they relish.

"We're headquartered in mainland China with a pretty big sales and marketing team that's all led by men," says Chen, whose father bought the then-state-owned distillery of the Fukien Old Wine Group in 1993. "[The head office has always been very fixed on the chain of command-they don't really adapt to how society has changed over the past few years, whereas we're sharing with them a lot of new things that they probably never thought about before." The cocktail event, which was held to coincide with International Women's Day in March, "was crazy for them", she recalls. "They were actually super impressed, which I was shocked about."

Both third-culture kids-Chen was brought up in New Zealand where her education consisted of "running around barefoot", while Mah attended an international school in the northern Chinese city of Qingdao-the pair first met in secondary school in Hong Kong, and later reconnected in the city several years after entering the workforce.