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Popular bak kwa brand Lim Chee Guan's walk-in sale started on Feb. 8 after an overwhelming online sale.

Members of the public can visit their physical outlets to buy bak kwa from Feb. 8 to Feb. 10.

The news attracted queues for both outlets at People's Park Complex and New Bridge Road with the first customer arriving at the latter outlet at 4am on Feb. 8.

Shorter queue at People's Park Complex

Amongst Lim Chee Guan's four branches, two of them are located at Chinatown.

Although the New Bridge road branch only opens at 9am, 8world reported that there were already more than 50 people in the queue outside the store at 8am on Feb. 8.

Although there were no floor markings to enforce safe distancing, the customers instinctively maintained safe distancing amongst each other.

When the store opened at 9am, the queue had grown to more than 140 people and stretched all the way to Temple Street with more people continuing to join the queue.

The other branch at People's Park Complex opened at 9am, an hour earlier than usual.

The queue for this branch only had over 20 people when 8world arrived at the scene at 9:10am.

Both stores have different purchase limits.

The New Bridge Road branch permits each customer to buy a maximum of 50kg of bak kwa while the People's Park Complex restricts each customer to a maximum of 20kg.

The New Bridge Road outlet told 8world that they had prepared sufficient bak kwa stock for the day.

"As long as we do not put up the 'end of queue' sign or advise customers to stop queueing, you can definitely make your purchase no matter how long you queue."

First customer at 4am

The first customer at the front of the queue at the New Bridge Road branch is a woman who wishes to remain anonymous.

She had arrived at the store at 4am and was prepared to buy 6kg of bak kwa to share amongst her family and to gift to friends during the Chinese New Year.

Another customer, a 50-year-old man, identified as Lee, had encountered problems when attempting to make his order online.

Upon receiving the news that Lim Chee Guan was accepting walk-in purchases, he took leave off work just to come down to buy bak kwa with his friend as the second and third customers in the queue.

Coming down to buy Lim Chee Guan bak kwa before Chinese New Year is a tradition that Lee has kept alive for more than 10 years.

He believes, the people who queue are substantially lesser than in previous years.

"Last time, they would hand out queue tickets, and I had encountered an instance when they were fully distributed by 8:30am. However, due to the pandemic, everyone is maintaining safe distancing. Yet, the queue is not as long as the queue for previous years."

The fourth person in the queue, identified as Chen, is also a Lim Chee Guan fan.

Chen had also tried to order online but encountered problems and did not succeed.

As a result, he arrived at 5:30am to join the queue.

He said, "Even if I arrive a little later, I still have to queue for three to four hours. I might as well arrive earlier, so I can return home earlier after making my purchase."

Well-prepared to queue

According to 8world's observations, some customers were seated on chairs that they had brought themselves while remaining in the queue, especially the first 10 or so customers at the New Bridge Road branch.

Some people were either reading a book or watching videos on their mobile phones to kill time while waiting for their turn.

Those who did not come with chairs were sitting on the ground or the edge of planters to reduce the discomfort of standing for too long.

8world noticed that numerous people chose to try their luck at the People's Park Complex branch after seeing the long queue outside the New Bridge Road branch.

One of them is 40-year-old Lin who had rushed down to buy bak kwa before going to work.

She had not expected that the New Bridge Road would already have over 100 people in the queue.

As a result, she decided to have a look at the People's Park Complex branch and was overjoyed to see that there were only over 10 people in the queue at that time. "It's the same taste of bak kwa after all. If I can buy it quicker here and don't need to queue as much, that's great!"

Editor note on Feb. 10: An interviewee has alerted us to some inaccuracies in the portion that she was quoted for, we have since removed the inaccurate parts and edited the article accordingly.

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Top images by Lim Chee Guan on Facebook and Karen Lui.