Singapore · ice cream
Uncle Chieng
The most documented living figure in the ice-cream-uncle tradition that the city's own recorded question is about: a named, still-operating hawker on the same corner for over three decades, in a trade that regulation has made structurally unable to renew itself. He is also the primary source, across two independent interviews, for how the bread-and-wafer format actually developed.
What we know
- Started as a mobile ice-cream stall in 1965 around the Tanglin Halt and Chinatown/Outram Park area, and has been permanently stationed outside Ngee Ann City (Takashimaya) on Orchard Road since 1993, per the business's own history page (unclechieng.com/about-us)
- One of just seven ice-cream hawkers still trading on Orchard Road out of only 13 islandwide licences left in Singapore; the licences are personal, non-transferable, and are no longer being issued, so the number can only fall (The Independent Singapore, 27 Dec 2023, citing SFA figures reported by CNA)
- Confirmed still operating from the same Orchard Road corner as of December 2024, when dating app Bumble ran a month-long promotion from his cart (Marketing-Interactive, 12 Dec 2024)
- Gave his own first-hand account of how the dish took its current form: vendors in the 1960s first used ice-lolly sticks, which let the ice cream 'melt and drop off quickly', so sellers switched first to rectangular blocks and then to round wafer biscuits that held it in place (Mothership, 15 Sep 2018, quoting Uncle Chieng directly)
- Built a corporate lineage on top of the cart: an events catering arm, Crème of Dreams, founded with his son in 2002; distribution rights to F&N Magnolia ice cream from 2004 and then Unilever Wall's from 2009; and his own retail brand, Uncle Chieng Pte Ltd, established in 2016 (unclechieng.com/about-us)
- Status
- open
- Address
- Outside Ngee Ann City, Orchard Road, Singapore
- Maker
- Known publicly as 'Uncle Chieng' (born in Swatow, China; full personal name not published); his son Alvin Chieng runs the related catering business
- Opened
- 1965
- Website
- unclechieng.com/
- Last checked
- 2026-08-21
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