In order to make healthy chicken available to more people, Madam Mary Chen expanded her business with the spirit of giving back to society and extended her love to bring the 100% all-natural Beacon Chicken to general consumers.
The touching story behind Madam Mary Chen's venture into Beacon Chicken
In early 2019, Madam Mary Chen, the managing director of Beacon Hospital, ventured into the new business of Beacon Chicken. Both of these two seemingly unrelated fields came together for her with an uncanny connection, drawing her to devote herself thereto without a murmur. All of this sprung simply from her care and frequent interactions with the cancer patients.
Before starting this all-natural chicken farm, being well aware of the reservations many cancer patients had about eating chicken and their worries of not being able to get a healthy, balanced diet which would subsequently have ill effects on their cancer recovery, Madam Mary - as dedicated as she has always been - decided to go all the way from shopping for Malay Kampung chickens at wet markets to preparing homemade chicken essence for the patients. Undoubtedly much time and effort were put into this as she tirelessly did it every day.
It was these inconspicuous bowls of chicken essence extracted with love that nourishes the patients’ bodies and minds, ameliorating their physical health and promoting mental wellness.
Granted that Malay Kampung chickens are always readily available, Madam Mary pointed out that she had zero ideas about the actual feed formulation and breeding environment of these chickens. Such concern prompted her to develop the idea of starting her own all-natural poultry farm and after which she was determined to adopt the most natural breeding method possible by growing chickens without the use of antibiotics, hormones and chemicals. In this way, consumers are offered peace of mind with high-quality chicken.
At the start of her Beacon Chicken business, Madam Mary came across a Taiwanese PhD in Agricultural Science who selflessly shared with her how to formulate tip-top chicken feed. This feed formula comprises a fine combination of seaweed, moringa leaves, hawthorn, chrysanthemum, probiotics, essential microelements and vitamins, each of which has significant nutritional benefits in the production of healthy poultry products.
‘Beacon Chicken does not employ chemical-based or poor breeding practices to promote the growth of the chickens. Not only has Beacon Chicken been issued with Halal Certificate, but all batches of chicken samples are also regularly sent to independent laboratories for quality control testing to ensure stringent quality and standards are met, in addition to being certified as free of harmful contaminants, antibiotics, growth hormones, chemicals and heavy metals.’ said Madam Mary.
Quick-Freezing Technology maintains the freshness and flavour of chicken
Seaweed Chicken and Kampung Seaweed Chicken are reared for 40 and 90 days respectively, i.e. until they reach the optimum slaughter age, before being sent to the slaughterhouse. Then, the freshness and nutritional value of the chicken meat are preserved using advanced quick-freezing technology to prevent harmful bacteria from causing the raw chicken to spoil. As such, consumers get to taste the original flavour and the tender texture of chicken retained from farm to table.
Madam Mary candidly admitted that chicken farming is no easy task — all the more so because Beacon Chicken upholds the principle of not using antibiotics and hormones in chicken breeding, which cause an increase in feeding cost. This is even made worse by the rising poultry feed cost coupled with the impact of the pandemic.
Be that as it may, she still insists on doing her best in this business and does not intend to increase the selling price, in the hope that more people may be able to enjoy the natural goodness of chicken with great relish.
RM3 donated to Beacon CSR Welfare Fund for every whole chicken sold
The original aspiration of establishing Beacon Chicken was to help cancer patients. Madam Mary sympathises with the predicament of low-income patients who can scarcely afford large medical expenses, so she joins hands with Beacon Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Welfare Fund to assist such patients whereby for every sale of a whole chicken at Beacon Chicken, RM3 will be channelled to the fund. This enables Beacon Chicken customers to be partners in the charity work of alleviating the financial burden of cancer patients while enjoying healthy and delicious chicken.
Beacon Chicken's farm is located at Tangkak, Johor, breeding about 100,000 chickens per month. Madam Mary estimated that if all of the chickens bred can be sold out every month, there will roughly be a monthly RM300,000 donated to Beacon CSR Welfare Fund. She hopes that the public can take proactive action to support Beacon Chicken and in turn do cancer patients a favour to tide them over.
20 outlets in the Klang Valley
In addition, Beacon Chicken has successively opened 20 Beacon Mart outlets throughout the Klang Valley up till this year. Consumers can opt for in-store purchases, self-pick-ups or delivery services. In other words, Beacon Chicken can be purchased by visiting any of the Beacon Mart physical stores or via online shopping at the Beacon Chicken website. What is more, Beacon Chicken offers consumers residing in Kuala Lumpur and Selangor free delivery on online orders over RM100, while consumers outside of this region will just have to pay RM30 for shipping.
