Inside the central kitchen: the jelly batch begins at 4:30 a.m.

The lights go on in the La Sams central kitchen at 4:30 a.m., three hours before the first store opens. This window decides the quality of everything sold that day.

Leaves arrive overnight

Fresh grass-jelly leaves are harvested and moved in overnight, kept chilled the whole way. Leaves must arrive whole, unbruised and unwilted — each lot is checked by eye and nose before it is accepted.

Worked in a closed room

Rather than working the leaves by hand in the open, La Sams does all washing and pressing inside a temperature-controlled closed room. The reason is simple: the sap is what gives the jelly its texture, and it is very sensitive to dust and heat.

This step decides the bite. Under-worked leaves give a crumbly jelly; over-worked ones turn it hard and strip the leaf aroma.

Cook, set, check

The filtered liquid is cooked to a fixed ratio and left to set on its own. No gelatin, no jelly powder. Every batch is checked on three counts before packing: set, aroma and colour.

A good batch is a clear blue-black, glossy at the cut, and carries the fresh leaf smell plainly.

"Three nos" is not a slogan

• No sugar in the jelly itself. Sweetness in the finished drink comes from milk, fruit and the syrup level the guest chooses.
• No preservatives. This is why the jelly is only good for 24 hours.
• No colouring. The blue-black is the true colour of the sap.

Chilled out to the stores

The jelly is trayed, labelled with the batch cooking time, and moved chilled to all four stores before opening. There is no intermediate warehouse and no stock carried between days.

At closing, whatever is unsold is discarded. La Sams accepted that cost from the day the first store opened.