Kong Thai Lai, George Town’s 106-year-old kopitiam, closes on 26 September — pushed out by a third property sale

Kong Thai Lai, the Hainanese kopitiam that has poured coffee in George Town since 1920, will serve its last customers on 26 September 2026. The reason is not a lack of business. It is, for the third time in ten years, the building.

Third-generation operator Tan Jeng Seow, 68 — known to customers as Gary Tan — runs the shop with his elder brother Tan Jeng Kiang, 77. Tan told The Star the Lebuh Dickens shop will stop operating because the building's owner has decided to take back the premises. Buletin Mutiara's Chinese-language report is more specific about why: he was told months ago that the unit he rents is being put up for sale.

He decided not to move again.

"I think I need a good break and a good rest. I've had enough of this and it's time to move on," he said.

Three moves, three property transactions

This is the part worth paying attention to, because it is not a story about a coffee shop losing its customers. Kong Thai Lai has been displaced three times, and each time the trigger was the building changing hands:

• 1920–2016, Lorong Hutton. Tan's grandfather founded the business here and the family lived above the shop. In March 2016 the coffee shop and four others in the row were served eviction notices by a new building owner, a Singapore-based company. They were told to vacate by June, appealed, and were given until the end of September.
• 2016–2022, Lebuh Leith. The family moved about 300m away to 38, Lebuh Leith — also a heritage building, but not their heritage.
• 2022–2026, Lebuh Dickens. The current shop, where the old blinds still carry the Lorong Hutton address and a cabinet from the original premises still stands. Now the landlord is preparing to sell.

What this says about the George Town shophouse market

A tenant with 106 years of goodwill, a national-level reputation and a queue out the door still has exactly as much security as their tenancy gives them — which, on a typical Malaysian shop tenancy, is very little. Goodwill attaches to the business; it does not attach to the premises, and it is not compensable when the owner sells.

That asymmetry is the whole story. Every one of these three displacements was a perfectly ordinary, perfectly legal property transaction. The shophouse was worth more sold than tenanted, so it was sold. Repeat that across a heritage core and the tenants who give the area its character are steadily priced or noticed out, one transaction at a time — while the buildings themselves are conserved.

For anyone buying or leasing George Town shophouse space, the practical lesson is unglamorous: the length and terms of your tenancy are the business asset. A long lease with a renewal option, a right of first refusal on a sale, or outright ownership of the premises are the only things that would have changed this outcome. Kong Thai Lai survived a century of competition and lost to a signature on a sale and purchase agreement.

A century of customers

The shop's reputation was built on its own kaya, its own roasted and blended coffee beans, charcoal-grilled toast and half-boiled eggs.

Its most famous regular was the late Penang tycoon Tan Sri Loh Boon Siew, the Honda motorcycle distributor whose rags-to-riches story is Penang folklore. He reportedly came almost daily until the final years before his death in 1995, sitting at his favourite marble-top table with friends over strong coffee with condensed milk and kaya toast. He was said to be so fond of that table that he once offered RM10,000 for it; the family declined.

Tan Sri Robert Kuok also visited, and reportedly bought 8kg of the shop's coffee powder after drinking it there. Framed newspaper cuttings about the visit still hang on the wall.

Tan, who has been in the business about 40 years, commutes each morning from Bukit Gambir and starts work around 7am. His only son, 28 and working overseas, will not take over.

"He won't be doing it. That's the end of the era," he said.

Asked how he felt, he said it was mixed: sad about the customers, happy about the rest. "At the moment, I'm not thinking of anything. I just need a good rest and we'll go on from there."

*Cover photo: Siew Chia En/Buletin Mutiara. Other photos: courtesy of The Star (Zhafaran Nasib) and Buletin Mutiara (Siew Chia En).*