One and a half years on, Samuel has done well enough for himself to buy his own HDB flat, a four-room resale unit at Jalan Kayu for “around $400,000” under the Single Singapore Citizen Scheme. According to Samuel, buying his own home had been his “ultimate goal that I was working towards”. And starting his food biz, he says, had “speeded up the process”.
After paying off his defunct fashion label’s bank loans “dollar by dollar with Mum’s Ngoh Hiang”, he diligently stashed half of his monthly profit in a separate savings account that he “doesn’t touch”. Samuel recalls: “I didn’t have much money saved from [my fashion business Evenodd], with rental and operational costs. A lot of savings were lost on it ’cos I was trying not to kill my brand. It was quite bad — I was even thinking of getting another job while I was running Evenodd.
In the early days of Mum’s Ngoh Hiang, Samuel had his doubts about its viability. “Ngoh hiang is very niche. Nobody thought it could be a business. But I thought, if Bee Cheng Hiang can sell only bak kwa, why can’t I?” he reasons. And instead of running it like a fashion label where he created designs ranging from casualwear to company uniforms, he decided to “do everything the opposite way” with food.
popped up. “We started from selling 10 boxes a week. When there was good hype, we could sell up to 800 boxes a month,” he shares. “This was consistent for a year, and that was how we managed to survive the pandemic.”But since June this year, Samuel says his sales have inexplicably “dropped by at least 50 per cent”. He tried coming up with promotions to attract customers, which worked for a short while.
Opening his own cafe, Samuel says, will allow him to cater to walk-in customers . “I realised that the dynamics have changed. People don’t want to wait to eat anymore. They want the food now,” he says. “With my new shop we will be able to entertain people who want ngoh hiang immediately, and we will hop onto delivery platforms so they can order anytime.”
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