How does it feel to have ridden out the pandemic in your first year of operations?
Shaq Aznir, head of marketing at Fowlboys: It's been a hell of a ride. My partner Johann Razali and I started off in our apartment kitchen and have always had the advantage of being delivery-centric, but it was a challenge to get everything up and running with the MCO restrictions. Since it wasn’t the best time to go out, we purchased a lot of our equipment from Shopee (for example: our deep-fryer that we're still using to this day!).
At the peak of MCO, we were doing 50 to 100 burgers a day, and it took a toll on us physically and mentally. But the first few times that MCO restrictions loosened up and restaurants were allowed to seat customers again, we saw a dip in sales. It was worrying at the start, but we kept making improvements to our menu and pushed through. Thankfully, we've managed to grow our fanfare and keep our sales steady since.
Aidan Low, executive chef at Akâr Dining: It was definitely not a dull year. At any point in the first MCO, we could have shut down for good. And to go back and forth between delivery and dine-ins is not simple—we've had to go through this dilemma many, many times. How do we sustain ourselves financially while maintaining the right image in the eyes of our customers? There's no win-win; there are always sacrifices. But we've pulled through, and being able to talk to you about it is a win for us at Akâr.
Lau Ka Hong, chef-proprietor at Atelier Binchotan: To be honest, we were quite calm when the pandemic happened. Save for worrying about our finances, there was nothing much we could do.
