Covid-19 has changed how businesses work in this day and age. DPM Heng Swee Keat, during the delivery of the Fortitude budget, has quoted a McKinsey study that showed how we have jumped five years forward in consumer and business digital adoption in a short span of eight weeks. For now, the way forward is definitely online.
Enter Circuit Breaker:
When the circuit breaker was implemented, F&B outlets were allowed to stay open for only takeaway and deliveries. With the closure of many offices and WFH scheme, this meant lesser foot traffic for food stalls near CBD areas.
We checked in with Vonica, who is the co-owner of Chop Chop Biryani & Meats at Amoy Street Food Centre on how the Covid-19 situation and circuit breaker has affected her stall.
Hi Vonica, could you give us a quick description of your business located in Amoy Street Food Centre?
We are a team of 2 young hawkers at Amoy Street Food Centre selling Chinese Indian pork biryani since 2017. It is a Chindian biryani place offering different varieties of meat cooked using Chinese Indian method served with our own style of biryani rice. The idea came about through a pure random meeting of 2 cuisines – biryani rice and sio bak (roasted pork belly), in a potluck gathering.
At Chop Chop Biryani & Meats, we aim to define a new Chindian cuisine by marrying the best cuisine of both cultures.
We also own another stall, Kitchen Of, located diagonally opposite Chop Chop Biryani & Meats. It is another Chinese Indian fusion concept focused on making fresh naan daily, chutney, and grilled items, which we initially intended for it to be open in mid-March 2020 but we could not do so due to the ongoing coronavirus outbreak.
How has business changed for you and your team since the implementation of circuit breaker?
Our business was greatly affected since the implementation of the circuit breaker. It was already bad before and now, it’s worse since Amoy Street Food Centre is located near many offices. People working from home these days caused a huge drop in the walk-ins at the stall.
We figured the only way to survive was to provide delivery, but we had zero experience in doing so. We first approached our families and friends to help kickstart the first few deliveries and then fine-tune our operations along the way to facilitate a smooth process for everyone involved.
Was it difficult for you and your team to shift from an offline business to an online business? What were some difficulties and challenges you faced?
It was a huge challenge for us! We may be young hawkers, but we were social media noobs. We were not very active on social media to begin, with not even on our own personal accounts! But we knew reaching out to the public audience via social media being an option has now become a thing in the past, we just had to step up and integrate social media into the business.
As Chop Chop Briyani & Meats is stepping towards its 3rd birthday, it has never stopped being a relentless journey of perfecting whatever we bring to the table. While we continue to emphasize strict standards on our food preparation and operations at the stall, we are now also creating content to get more people to know more about us.
Business-wise, would you say that you are coping well?
Business is still down by 40-50% for us despite providing island-wide delivery services. However, we are very thankful for the responses received so far. We were able to pay off our utility bills, suppliers, and our workers last month. Thank you to everyone who has supported us!
We understand that you were helping to pool a group of Grab drivers to help the other hawker stalls in Amoy Street Food Centre, how did that go?
It started off with my dad who is a Grab driver who helped out with the deliveries during the beginning. We then moved on to working with a group of Grab drivers directly after we got more contacts on hand. The initial thought was to only help the drivers get by this period, but we realized many other hawkers do not have the means to do provide delivery services. We thought maybe we could lend a helping hand to return the kindness that was given to us when we were just starting out.
…we realized many other hawkers do not have the means to do provide delivery services. We thought maybe we could lend a helping hand to return the kindness that was given to us when we were just starting out.
As we are a team of 2 managing this whole delivery system manually, we only have 3 other stalls onboard at the moment. We would love to include more stalls and help more hawker vendors especially the older generation hawkers after we have sourced for a better system to consolidate the orders.
Do you see yourself doing island-wide deliveries in the future, even after circuit breaker has ended?
Yes, definitely! Our island-wide deliveries include locations at Sentosa, Tuas and Jurong Island. We would love to continue to provide our pork-alicious biryani to everyone in Singapore!
Any additional words you would like to say?
We are actively working towards building a website to better improve our ordering processes, e.g. lessen time spent on manually collating orders via various channels and issuing of e-receipts translating into a more friendly interface and quicker processes for customers order and inquiries. We can’t wait for it to be ready! More hawker stalls will then be able to come onboard our platform and customers are encouraged to place orders from different hawker stalls for one delivery at an affordable price.
After speaking to many of our customers during this circuit breaker, the idea of purchasing our frozen packed meats was very well received! It allows them flexibility and convenience to simply serve and plate our Chindian cuisine at any time of the day and at any occasion. We are taking on the challenge to create more varieties while managing the stalls at the same time… frozen ready meals might just be on the menu next!
We would love to invite more voices to share ideas and how we can overcome this pandemic together! Perhaps creating a close-knitted community to discuss and innovate during this trying period on how to keep F&B businesses especially in the hawker scene.
Many a time we mentioned about keeping the kampong spirit alive on our Facebook page, and it has been really heartening to see so much support on #HelpingFellowHawkers. #HelpingFellowHawkers remains as the core of We the Hawkers, an initiative born to help and bring the hawker community together to adapt to the changing times. We believe that in new creations and improvisation on both traditional and modern cuisines, we as a whole hawker community can carry on and rise together.
You can order Chop Chop Biryanis & Meat via this Google Doc link or check out their Facebook page for more information.
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