Hearty Flavours and Warm Hospitality – Happy Veggies

The emblem of Happy Veggies comprises a tomato wearing a headset and a letter “D”, which concisely conveys the restaurant’s mission: To promote healthy vegetarian food to the public as well as to create job opportunities for those who are hearing-impaired, old and unemployed.

Its manager Mr. William NGAI, who has got many years of experience in running vegetarian restaurants, understands that the catering industry is highly competitive. He expressed his gratitude for media and customer support which has enabled the restaurant to build a strong customer base. “Our restaurant does not only attract vegetarians, but also people working nearby”, he said.

Mr. William NGAI, the manager of the Happy Veggies, has many years of experience in managing vegetarian restaurants. With patience, he manages to help his colleagues reach their full potential.

Happy Veggies provides family-styled vegetarian dishes, and focuses on cooking with less oil, salt and sugar ingredients without MSG and prepared food. They incorporate vegetarian ingredients into conventional cookery to create healthy and delicious dishes. For instance, they use vegetarian soup made of red beans, green beans, cow peas, carrots, bean sprouts and luohanguos to enhance soup base flavour. To make stuffed egg plants flavourful, they even fill the eggplants with bean curds, shiitake mushrooms and corns for creating a throat-soothing and non-greasy texture.


Mr. CHEUNG Wai-leung, the General Chef of the Happy Veggies, always spends time to explore new ideas of cooking and coach new kitchen staff on cooking skills. Under his guidance, a hearing-impaired employee was promoted to assistant chef.


In collaboration with charitable organisations dedicated to helping the hearing-impaired, Happy Veggies recruits and provides on-the-job support to employees with hearing impairment, who make up of over half of their staff. To streamline the ordering process, the restaurant’s menus contain pictures of food to help customers make food choices. Mr. Andy CHUNG, the restaurant’s manager said, “People with hearing impairment have smaller social network because they have difficulties in expressing themselves verbally. We must be more tolerant and accepting to them.” To facilitate communications between their staff, sign language trainings were also offered.





Extract from CookSmart, Issue 23