Willie Choy's Empire Cafe, Murwillumbah

In about 1920, Willie Lum Choy acquired Chow Kum’s Empire Café opposite the Post Office in Main Street. Chinese families had been operating in town as fruiterers at least since the turn of the century and the Choy family, continuing to trade as Chow Chum & Co, gradually grew their business into a major fruit merchandising enterprise.

Like the Greeks, Willie served up Australia fare, as it wasn’t for another 40yrs that the locals were game enough to try yankee chop suey. During the early ‘Clayton’s Depression’ years, when the other cafes were falling like ninepins, he introduced a novel marketing scheme by offering 1/6d each meal or 3/6d by the day. This turned out to be a recipe for slowly going broke so he leased the business in late 1926 and tried his luck in Mullumbimby for a year or so. In late 1929 he bought back into the fruiterer's side of Chow Kum & Co by acquiring the shares of Willie War and joining Charlie See Ken in partnership. But this attempt at diversification ended a few days later when another mysterious fire took out the shop and five others, including the Imperial Hotel.

Information retrieved from the Aliens of the Tweet & in Brunswick website https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~aliens/history/index.htm