But first a commercial. Harry's View and Jake's View are the titles of two books - a collection of cartoons by Harry and a collection of columns by Jake, published by the South China Morning Post late last year. They come highly recommended; the authors say so.
Back to the fray. We are talking here of the news that the Tai Cheong Bakery, highly recommended by former governor Chris Patten for its egg tarts, has found new premises just a few doors up on Lyndhurst Terrace from its previous shop, which it left after the landlord demanded rent of $80,000 a month.
You will recall the outpouring of sympathy for proprietor Au Yeung Tin-yun. Here was a Hong Kong landmark, one of those features of our city that make it unique, destroyed by greed. Even prominent legislators got on the bandwagon to lament the bakery's passing and decry the ways of landlords.
Now it has opened again, paying $60,000 a month, 58 per cent up on the previous rent, but keeping the price of its egg tarts at $3.50 each, which makes you wonder whether it was really such a slim margin business at its old premises. Mr Au Yeung, however, intends to make up for some of the higher cost by offering fancy coffee as well as egg tarts.
It is a better looking shop now too. The old one was, to say the least, a bit downmarket for an increasingly upmarket shopping street, and that new offer of coffee speaks volumes about giving the market what it wants. What we have here, in short, is a gradual adaptation to the changing tastes of a changing society, and I congratulate landlords for helping that adaptation along.
If we still had protected tenancies with protected rents, Lyndhurst Terrace would still be a street of tatty old shops selling only house paint, hardware and Hello Kitty knick-knacks.
We see it elsewhere at the moment, with department stores forced out of shopping centres by landlords no longer willing to accept rents of half as much as smaller shops pay. The reason it is happening is that department stores no longer draw people into the centres. People have changed and the retail rental market has changed with them.
You may say, of course, that rising rents mean higher prices for consumer goods. Although it has not yet been the case with Mr Au Yeung's egg tarts, let us suppose that it were, and that Mr Au Yeung had to raise prices. You would then face a choice. Would you say his egg tarts were worth more than $3.50 each? If you did, you would pay more and Mr Au Yeung would be able to stay on Lyndhurst Terrace.
If you did not, then so much for your praise of his superior egg tarts. The acid test would demonstrate that you did not really believe they were that good. You, the shopper, would have voted with the contents of your wallet for a different range of retail goods on Lyndhurst Terrace and the landlords of Lyndhurst Terrace would hear you.
Let me conclude with another acid test. There have been other instances of protest about greedy landlords. So how true is it of the entire retail business in Hong Kong? By just how much have increases in retail rents historically outstripped increases in consumer prices?
The chart tells you that they have not. The two are not a perfect match over time but, relative to each other, they stand at about where they did 25 years ago.
In other words, although we may witness the occasional protest concerning a few high-profile cases of rent increases in high-profile shopping districts, most of Hong Kong's shopkeepers are doing just fine, thank you very much, in an efficient rental market.
I like egg tarts, but I know of a few places that offer ones just as good as the Tai Cheong Bakery's. That bakery has now also knocked out a stationery shop that I rather liked.
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