Musings of an Intrepid Business Owner (II)

I finally started operations probably on the wrong foot with my landlord but I was eager to start and not waste a single day of my rent. As a business owner now, my perspective has changed to everyday is an opportunity to earn money compared to when I was a corporate worker when I really didn’t care since I get my salary every month whether I put in a full day’s work or not.

#6 Connectivity Woes

One of the early teething problems was the delay in setting up my WiFi. I thought I could rely on my mobile hotspot for the initial days but it appears that M1 connection is almost non-existent in this location. As such my POS system which is heavily dependent on WiFi connection kept hanging and I couldn’t place orders. It didn’t help that being a new place, everyone was eager to try it out. It was a nightmare when the crowds kept coming and I couldn’t take orders electronically – it was down to pen and paper to take orders and collect payment while juggling to churn out the orders in time. I suddenly understood why the previous tenant had advised me to use an automated system for order and payment. My customers ended up waiting for more than 45 mins for their food and those death stares weren’t something very comfortable to deal with.

#7 Manpower Woes

I had started operations with two hires in the bag. Both Singaporeans – one who would serve as my new head chef after my consultancy contract ends with this lady chef, and the second would be a kitchen assistant. I would then take on the role of service crew to take orders and serve. Alas, it was not meant to be. The kitchen assistant boy MIA-ed a couple of days before we started operations. He didn’t reply my messages or take my calls and I guessed that probably signalled his ‘sayonara’ to me. The head chef guy contracted COVID so he had to take MC for at least 2 weeks. Even after he had recovered, he came to work for a couple of days and fell sick again. Then it became a cycle of work one day and MC the rest of the week for almost a month. In the meantime my consultant chef and I were practically running the show. Thank God that my eldest son, Joel, was having his semester break from August till mid October so he unwillingly came to work for me during his break. It is times like this that I finally understood the tangible benefits of having children.

After a month of ding dong-ing with the head chef, I issued him an ultimatum because this kind of turn up rate was simply not acceptable especially since all of us were suffering from the lack of manpower. As my chef consultant only worked till 5pm, I had to take the dinner shifts together with my son and it was extremely stressful! I had up to this point of time only experienced the stress of corporate life – dealing with presentations, stakeholder management and giving public talks, but the stress of cooking up all the orders that kept piling in in a timely manner and also trying to remember the steps was stress at a different level. What’s more after we close, we still had to wash up and clean up the kitchen. I ended my days close to 10pm and I was dead tired by then. At times I asked myself why I left my high paying corporate job to wash dishes and earn close to nothing for it?!

Anyway the head chef guy didn’t take well to my ultimatum and simply said that he would resign. Fine by me! But I told him that he still needed to serve notice while I look for a replacement. He then showed me attitude and replied that he couldn’t serve notice if he was sick. I was too busy that day to respond to that. Then a few days later, he suddenly changed tact and asked if he could still report back to work. Apparently he found out that he had stones in his kidneys and needed an operation to remove them. In the course he racked up his medical bill and now needed a job to pay for it. Truth or not, I have no idea. I wrestled with the decision for a while but since I have already seen his true colors, I decided that I couldn’t keep him on my payroll. So I paid him for the few days he did work and terminated his employment. Thankfully my employment contract stipulated that he was only entitled to the 14 days MC if he had met a minimum number of work days.

#8 Air Circulation Woes

It seemed that my problems would not stop. If you recall this unit that I had leased did not have any exhaust functionalities so technically I wasn’t allowed to do any deep frying. However much of my menu did require that so we had continued to fry. Very soon I discovered why deep frying wasn’t recommended without a proper exhaust system. The whole unit started to stink up of grease and I returned home daily smelling like fried chicken. The smell was in my hair, my clothes, my bag and even my skin! Some of my customers started to comment that while they liked my food, they wouldn’t dine in because they didn’t want to smell like grease when they returned back to the seminar rooms or offices. I was beginning to lose customers with feedback like this. Thus began a search for a solution. I bought air purifiers to try and purge out the smell. I used my Rainbow vaccuum cleaner to perform daily air cleaning and placed charcoal deodorant everywhere in the shop.

My neighbour also kindly recommended me a contact from China whom I could order a ductless exhaust system from which would help me resolve my problem. It was initially difficult to communicate with the Chinese people but my experience purchasing from Taobao really helped so I was quick to understand the procedures. As I’ve often said before, no experience in our lives is ever wasted (even the worst kind). In order to import this exhaust unit into Singapore and install it in my shop, I needed SFA’s approval for it as ductless exhaust systems are typically not recommended. It required their assessment and also my landlord’s approval etc. Anyway it took a month or so to get all the documentations ready and SFA’s approval so I placed the order for the unit and had it shipped to Singapore.

I had of course sourced for local solutions prior to that but most of them cost in excess of $10,000. Through this method, I only paid a total of $2,000 for the equipment, shipping and installation! Yes we may all have our pre-conceived notions about buying equipment from China but if you think about it, almost everything is made in China today. Just because you bought it in Singapore doesn’t mean it wasn’t manufactured there. Is the difference in price really worth the assurance for local customer support? And this is also why it is important to know Chinese. Thank you LKY for making it compulsory education for us. After this successful transaction, I also started to source for other kitchen equipment on Taobao and it’s really quite a gem for F&B owners who want to experiment with new menu items without spending a bomb.

#Competition Woes

When I first started, I was the only F&B serving Japanese food in the area and we had a good run for more than two weeks despite the connectivity and manpower issues. If I had managed to continue on this streak, it wouldn’t be long before I would be turning in a profit. Alas, good things didn’t seem to last on my entrepreneurship journey. By the end of the month, a new Japanese restaurant serving sushi, dons and udons opened nearby. It was a bigger unit, more centralised and it was operated and funded by a serial restauranteur. They had really aggressive marketing strategy and budget such as offering free sashimi for a whole week as part of their opening promotions. They worked very closely with influencers to blog about their place and they also had a Google review campaign which rewarded customers with dining vouchers if they left a review. Within a month of operations, the unit accumulated more than 500 Google reviews! This was way more than the reviews from other incumbents in the area. I was floored by their marketing strategy. I had tried their food and wasn’t impressed by it. Goes to show that you don’t really need to serve premium food, you just need very good marketing and people will buy into it. Suddenly I lost faith in Google reviews.

As a result of this strong competitor, I pretty much lost close to 40% of my sales revenue and suddenly I found myself struggling to breakeven. I kept trying to convince myself that since they were a bigger unit, had more manpower and spent so much more on marketing, they would also have issues breaking even. However it was heart wrenching to hear from my chef consultant who is personal friends with the owners that they had a very good rental rate. It was only slighly more than mine for a much bigger unit in a centralised location! Manpower issues wasn’t really an issue for them too because they had several F&B businesses and they could simply rotate their employees around. Plus they have already established an ecosystem of rich and regular customers from their existing businesses so it wasn’t difficult for them to introduce this new menu into their offerings when they bidded for private functions. It also helped that one of the owners is a multi-millionaire himself so money was never an issue.

This left an extremely bitter taste in my mouth. I wanted to blame them for all my problems and suddenly I was so consumed with checking in on their day to day traffic and whenever they were full house unlike mine, I felt extremely miserable for the rest of the day. It really dampened my mood and many times I kept questioning my decision to start my business over and over and over again. Ironically after 3 months of operations, the business owners reached out to me via my chef consultant to ask if I would be keen to buy over their business from them for a whooping $150k. Apparently they found out that the cashflow potential wasn’t as great as they had hoped and wanted to move their money elsewhere. Spoken like a true businessmen.

This post sounds so miserable that it is a wonder how I actually managed to pull myself out of this and keep the business going.