Brick-Mortar-Cloud Podcast
Season 2 Episode 2:
Why I Shut Down My Busiest Claypot Shop While It Was Still Packed Every Day

Mark:
But quite funny, there’s this story about this guy from the Serangoon shop. So he called my phone—that time my phone was still for the company—and he said, “Eh bro, did you see like a carton of cigarettes?” Yeah, I left it behind. And he said, “I frequent your store since I was like a teenager. I really love your food.” And then I was trying to calculate—okay, if he smokes, he’s about 18, 19 years old, and that’s when I realized that we have customers who have been eating with us since they are from secondary school, and then up to when they are smoking, right, and probably up to when they have kids, right. So we cover quite a bit of this.

And that’s where I realized that when we implement certain dishes, certain new styles of our marketing, at least stop and consider what’s our brand about. Really deep dive—understanding the brand is where I really grew to make my brand be better in certain ways as compared to others, right. I really know who my customers are. My cook can like, come and tell me, okay, let’s try this dish for our LTO—you know, limited time offer for the next three months or so. But the moment she proposes this item, I would know—okay, it’s not suitable. So I think from my perspective, I’m still very familiar with what the customers want, and my GM now, she has a very good sensing and seasoning as well. So whatever decision we make, whenever we release a product—be it fifteen dollars, eighteen dollars—how much to put in that bowl, we will know very clearly what is the concept about.

Host:
So we talk about scaling right—now seven outlets and every year hopefully open two more. There’s going to be a question on capital. And then as you know, entrepreneur, you have always been running many businesses—whether is it wonton mee, I heard you studied car, everything, right. So how do you think about this concept—capital? Did you get investors’ money and how do you scale the business to the next level?

Mark:
The seed funding was very basic. Me and my partner, we just decided—when we had two shops, we wanted to buy a central kitchen, so it was quite a bold move, but a good decision now that we are able to use the kitchen. But when we proposed to everyone like, we want to raise money, our two shops are doing well, how much we are earning—usually for us it’s usually the warm markets. Then they take faith and they know what we are about and then they invest in us. So we have a plan, we tell them that based on this valuation, because we are doing the work, then they get a certain share out of it as well. We will tell them that the money will be used to purchase the central kitchen, and the other bulk of it will be used to expand the brand onwards. And we also will tell them that based on what we are earning now, we are able to give a certain amount of dividends yearly or quarterly. So we are able to fulfill that. And then when the company grew a bit bigger, we made some changes into holding back dividends for our business to grow, to scale, and they are okay with it as they see the valuation of the company based on our revenue grow, have faith in us.

I think I learned is that initially I was a bit skeptical as to, okay, what am I going to do with these shares? And like, what if I want to buy it back from them and what they want? I learned something is that the starting part of the business—because they are like kind of like angel investors—they take faith to invest, right? Yeah. So I should do it in the same way where it’s really Chinese, like you can say. So, you know, certain decisions, if it’s of course on paper, doing stuff like maybe normal contract terms, yes, but I appreciate their confidence in me and I do the same back to them as well. So it’s not one-way, right.

Host:
Right. When you think about scaling your business, of course you have this equity fundraising where you mentioned it’s for scaling a business and a central kitchen, right. Did you also take loans or other kind of financial help or how did you structure that as in, okay I open new outlet, so how much I need to get equity and how much I need to get loan? Do you think about that? Like, how much is your profit from last year, you know, that kind of stuff?

Mark:
So our capital from all our investors remains the same. So everything is within our company. Opening up a shop for our size will be about maybe—including the deposits—will be about $500,000. We will usually try to take 200 or 250,000 and then for about four years, and it will slowly just pay off just to keep our cash flow right. So we try to get half of that upfront cost in loans with some facilities, then the other half is from your investors or your own profits and all those money that we saved along the way.

Yeah. So it’s about half or maybe even less, and as our business got bigger in a way, we were able to fund that ourselves, right. Yeah. So our cash flow is always now just keeping a minimum of like maybe two shops’ worth of revenue, right, and then opportunistically you can choose to go into if you have the right career and then also take loans if let’s say the rates are good.

I didn’t know this at first, but when I asked a banker—I take a four-year loan and I ask, like, what is the—tell me if I want to return early, okay? The banker told me this: “Why would you want to do that?” Like, that’s where people want to borrow more money. Actually, then it got me thinking like, if this is how it works, then I’ll just play the game as well. As long as we have our cash flow, then yeah, because we are self-funded, then we just take loans as we go along if we need to. Now as long as it’s not overleveraged and you can bring the cash flow, that’s the most important thing.

Host:
Yeah. So just now you also mentioned about expansion—what is the most important thing you think about? Do you have like a checklist—I want to look at this, look at that, look at for example—we talk about Hougang might have a renovation, a new library movement, we talk about new malls opening in Singapore—how would you decide if this is a good location?

Mark:
Easy to say is experience, but let me break it down for you. Understanding my brand took me a while as well. Everybody would say, oh, Vivocity, Northpoint is really good. Let me give you two examples. For Northpoint, they offered us a unit closer to the food court—very crowded—and the price of the rental was—it’s a fair price, it’s a good size unit as well. But let me check back—what is my brand about? So I got to know that, okay, customers who eat the food—it’s good, the amount is also justifiable, it’s good for quality, it’s good. Then when they pay the bill, or when you tell your friends, oh, the total amount is so and so, we want them to have the feeling of that value. I wouldn’t say it’s cheap, but value—okay, affordable.

And then we realized that if we open outlets that are closer to the food court and then they pay that price, then they will have the feeling like it’s expensive, it’s like—it’s not like the feeling that it’s actually quite expensive because the vibe is such. Like, I would open on the third floor where there’s less crowd, but because our food pulls—I mean, we are quite a brand that people will go and look for us—and beside us is other proper restaurant as well, and then people eat our food, then they realize our food has value. So we are just picky to the point of me knowing what exact position that we want to be in.

Yeah, we could probably make money in the Northpoint unit—I know we could—but it would just have that same feeling. I rather don’t—third floor, maybe on the second floor. I’ll give you an example: Vivocity basement, a lot of footfall, but I’d rather be on the second floor where the crowd is still there, the rent maybe even cheaper, but when customers eat there, you know, right now this price is really good.

So I think just understanding my brand and the experience from there. And one more thing—we actually did a consulting with a company that was offices here. They actually did up some data analysis thing, like more of their stuff—where there’s points, what are the schools nearby, is it close to an anchor tenant, how many steps away, what is the facing, all by score. And if it passes that score, then we know that it’s good. Yeah. So we haven’t really implemented it because we are trying it out, but it’s pretty accurate. So if I were to not be in charge of it based on feeling, I think this chart will work.

Host:
But even though you can say it’s by feeling, this experience you have, right, there’s a good teachable moment that I want to repeat to the listeners, is that you need to understand your brand positioning. And if your brand position is value, then you need to be in an advantageous position in value, which is what you see on the second floor and third floor—still lesser footfall but better in amplifying what the brand means.

Mark:
Yes.

Host:
And I thought that was very meaningful because many times people are like, yeah, I just want to go for the one with the most footfall or maybe I just want to be where the cheaper rent is or the more expensive—I don’t know, right. But yeah, that’s very smart.

Mark:
I think that’s really been understanding the brand, like, for me, deep dive. It’s just really a lot of decisions. You were right—it may be right or wrong, but at least you have a direction, right.

Host:
So all these good stories and success, I’m sure you have difficulties also, right? Is there any example on maybe some outlets that maybe when you invested you didn’t do as well as you hoped, and what were some learnings that you can share with everybody on some decisions so that they don’t have to, you know, go through the same experience that you went through?

Mark:
Actually, fortunately for me—touch wood—every outlet that we opened, we managed to grow the business. But I would say one minor setback was when I opened the Bugis store. So this was on the fourth floor. When we first opened it, everybody was telling me, “Oh, Bugis+, it’s not the best—Bugis Junction is the one people go to.” And we took it because, okay, I think the young crowd will slowly get to know us. People from the Bugis Street and all will come to us.

When we first opened, for the first—I would say one month—it was really a bit slow. Yeah, I got—got me thinking like, I got lucky for the first of all, brand first of all outlet—imposter syndrome, so, you know. It came to a point where I had to school my staff to tell them, “When the customers come in, right, don’t put them at the side tables, put them in the center so it looks crowded.” It came to that point of me doing that.

Then I sit down and I look at the customers eating and the plating and stuff, then I realized a lot more work could be done, could be improved—like from the menu, and we were using a lot of blackboards at that time. So we realized that, yeah, it still looked cheap, I would say. But when it comes to the tough times, again, just relook and figure out where you can improve. But that was not the main turning point.

I realized that the crowd came in after one month, and then after the changes as well. Then I grew to understand that my brand is the type of brand that people will recommend and talk about it—right, by word of mouth recommend. So if I don’t come in strong, just maintain what’s good, don’t change too much, just follow your concept strongly, and make improvements only on those things that you can, and then just have some confidence.

And then slowly I really got to learn deeper on my brand, I gained more confidence, and now from there, every shop that opens—everything so far is pretty okay.

Host:
Right. You also did a brand transformation a little bit, where people will say, is it like a second-gen business or take over? Can you share a little bit more about that story?

Mark:
Yeah. So the first original Lau Wang character, it was drawn by my secondary school friend Adam—shout out to Adam. Yeah. And that was where I did the first one—right, the old character. So I realized that what sets me apart from other brands is that other Chinese restaurant brands—I need to be more—I would say “cool.”

When I talk about the guy that left his carton of cigarettes, I realized that they are staying with us, but for what reason? How to create this affinity to the brand? So I reached out to him, I said, “I need you to draw a new Lau Wang,” like, to keep the mascot.

At that time, I was thinking of changing it to like Heavenly Wang—just words. He said, “No, no, the mascot trend is coming up,” that’s where food vendors started to have mascots, right. So like even Haidilao has a mascot. So mascot trend was coming back. This is like three years ago—probably it’s already there.

One thing I learned—to let the experts do their job, right. He’s in this business of branding, and I listened to him, and I didn’t regret anything. From there, we drew the new logo, our character, the colors were set in, and through that we talked about the brand as well, like the meaning of what we stand for.

Again, I got to know more about what the brand is about—just keep talking about it. And then with the new renovation, the new style of menu to be more cool—I think that’s what set us apart, which is nice, like wearing the long T-shirt, yeah, so much. And we may not earn money from there, but we use it as giveaways so that it sets us apart from big brothers in the Chinese restaurant industry.

There was one change that we did, and then people think that it’s a second-gen that came in, but just nice, I’m lucky to be at the age of like—I want to be young, I want to learn from the young people, and I still have the traditional style of doing business. So I’m actually quite lucky to be smacked between—I really like to be in the know of what’s young, what’s on TikTok. So I think I have this age advantage. So yeah, people think it’s a second-gen, but yeah, it’s me from the start.

Host:
You from the start but revive and revitalized and re-innovating to make it, you mean, improving. Right. So now that you are scaling up and you have your GM and your leadership coming in, would you say that you’ve been being a bit more particular to things like KPI metrics and stuff like that? Do you track these kind of things? Do you have weekly meetings to see how your outlets are performing? Any of this kind of stuff, or sometimes it’s still quite gung-ho—hands-on and see the day and the luck of the day?

Mark:
When people ask me for advice for business, I’ve done quite okay myself, but I think I’m only good at, so far, my Lau Wang. And all these targets and down to the data is only like—it’s where my GM will come in and she will sort things out. Previously it was just, oh, how much you can sell, what was wrong, how many turns we do—it’s very basic.

But that’s why my GM will come in and she will sort everything out. So in terms of numbers, I know what’s going on, but now she sets the targets. So I’m like the founder and I’m taking care and giving some vision and direction, but down to the details, I already handed all the stuff to her.

Host:
Right. So some of the KPIs—you just mentioned turns, for example, on SKUs or bowls or things like that—does she track it in a way by, okay, every outlet need to have 100 covers per hour or something? Is it something that you see or do you see more of like, okay, we just have a weekly target on sales and for covers, you know, our general target kind of?

Mark:
Wow. What you see, our management style is—and what was working for you guys—we do targets just to pay the staff incentives. Okay. Yeah, we do that. We track, of course. You want to hit that target, we have a bonus. And when they hit a target that is a bit higher, we give them a super bonus. So all the staff really work hard for that—that’s pretty common.

With regards to data or what she pulls out—now that she’s in the company and she’s better than me, I would say—she will pull out the products that are not doing so well. Previously, how I look—I’ll ask my chef, “How is this selling?”—but I don’t know how good it is. Now she will really look at it, she’s like, “It’s not even moving in this category,” so we remove it, we change it to something else.

It’s something that I could have done, but my focus is always on the general—right, like big picture, attention. She will go see all this stuff that is actually more important.

Host:
How do you then manage your cost? Do you guys manage food cost more or labour cost more? You know, it’s competitive to be able to eat what you guys offer in the mall. How do you make money and do that right?

Mark:
Okay, because I started from hawker, right—like coffee shop style food—so the food cost is always 30–35%. So I always use this as a rough gauge of a benchmark to do so.

How I manage to make more money is for Lau Wang too—like I said before, it was cheap, and now I have branded it to being affordable. Right. So if I were to increase some items by a margin that is more than what people would actually do, I would confidently do it knowing that my product—when they eat it, they would still feel that the value is there, it’s affordable. And it comes with a lot of stuff that people don’t see—based on the marketing, even the menu that comes down.

When I observe other shops and if they are doing well or they don’t do well, I re-look into these details. They are using this kind of menu—does it scare the customer off to look expensive or to look cheap or something? A restaurant could be a high-end one, but they use a different something that still doesn’t match.

So I think for now, we have positioned it in a way that I think the customers would—even if we increased to reduce our cost to maybe 28% for certain items—they would still feel that it is good value.

Host:
Yeah, yeah. Then how about labour cost? Because I assume that with claypot there’s going to be a lot of work—you know, while you still have central kitchen and all, you still have something that needs to boil and serve piping hot, and then cleaning—you clean the claypot yourself, for example, or your staff do that?

Mark:
Yeah, I do it. It is a bit labour intensive, I would say. So it comes with the business. It’s okay—like people appreciate that the food is served hot. But the behind the scenes is a lot of labour.

One thing I would say that helped—two things. I think our central kitchen really helped in terms of the prep, and we are going to do a level higher, which is maybe outsource certain items on paper. So yeah, that’s one thing we’re going to do.

So we will calculate—okay, we increase for more people in the central kitchen, but each outlet we take out like one person or something like that. We are still in the midst of doing that, but that’s one.

Luckily, because I have a central kitchen—I wouldn’t say that central kitchen is the best choice, but it works well for us because we have a lot of products.

The other thing I would say regarding staff is that because I like to remember their names, I know who are the good staff. I know there are a lot of flaws in F&B industry, but one thing I feel that I have an edge is that I rarely let the good staff go. So if there is a good staff who is pregnant, I’ll ask her, “When—when is she going to deliver?” I’m going to be careful—I mean out of concern—like does she want to come back to work?

Although the team is big, I retain the good staff. So I think that’s something that—many companies will do it, but do they actually effectively implement this? Right. Yeah. Good staff—I try my best, I cling on to them.

Host:
Right. So I hear two ways of retention. The first one you mentioned is about whether people have delivery or, like, you know, their own personal stuff—you take care of them, you honour them as a leader to take care of them outside of just the work. The second thing you talk about sales incentive and bonus—you talk about, like, you know, if you hit your KPI, you get a lot of money, right. So money also talks, right. And that’s the way you manage to retain the good people and manage turnover cost, like I call it that way.

Mark:
Yeah.

Host:
Do you guys use any tools or any tech to help you scale your business?

Mark:
Actually, we are quite slow to this game. We recently adopted a loyalty program. Previously, it was the cards where we had to chop 10 stamps and you get the free sesame oil chicken—I don’t know if you had it before. We adopted a loyalty program and, like, with Avocado—it’s working well for us. I think in like one year or so, we managed to have like 60,000 members.

Host:
Wow.

Mark:
Yeah, that’s crazy. Good job Avocado as well for onboarding us. Yeah, we realized that our customers really want our membership because they eat quite often. We feel that—how to tap on this. And we use it to—of course EDM giveaways, how to get customers back during long periods, how do we give more during this period in terms of promotions, in terms of activities—a lot of them is done in this loyalty program. So it’s pretty good.

A lot of feedback as well—we use Momos for feedback and the good feedback will be pushed into Google as well, I think it’s all the comments stuff. But certainly, I think if I could, I would implement as many.

Host:
Actually, the way you phrase it, right, you say you’re not very tech-enabled—actually you are very tech-enabled, using customer feedback, using that—you know, that’s really, really good stuff. What about the trends that you see moving forward—like what are some areas of innovation that you possibly might want to look at in 2025–2026?

Mark:
Concepts are very important. I see many concepts—the food is on a scale of 1 to 10, I give it a 6 or 7. But the concept is so clear and so strong—when I eat the food, I know that it could be from a central kitchen also.

As time goes by, I think consumers will be more—not say all—but a lot will be focused on—the food is a seven, and your concept and price is right, it will do well. I see a trend in this.

I see a trend in the food being like—a lot of products will be from central kitchen suppliers, sources. The food is about there, but the concepts are strong. If it were me, I would put some focus into that as well.

Host:
Right. You said also you forecast that you guys are coming up with new concepts soon. Apart from the two brands that you have under the roof now, would there be a brand or sub-brand coming up soon?

Mark:
Based on the current concepts, I could double the size, so I would not try to change too much unless we are slowing down already. One thing I would probably want to look at would be something which uses less manpower.

Okay, so ordering, collection on your own, right. And then the kitchen would have, like, I’ll say, one or two to clear the tables and a kitchen full of people. So I think if I could develop a concept for—what kind of locations—for example, like, I just thought of this—like Kallang Wave Mall, Bukit Panjang, yeah, because they do fast.

But the concept has to be right—like you see Astons, I think they are doing well, right—fast, quick, try not to have too much manpower. I think that’s kind of like a little flaw in my business which I wish I could manage—the manpower cost a little bit better.

Host:
Right. Yeah, I mean like every business has their own challenges and their own strengths and weaknesses. But at least on your end, you know, good value, good scale, you know, and I think that the sharing has been very inspirational because for myself, I’m a big fan. I’ve dined there a lot of times, and I always had in mind—super amazing.

Now I’m going to go to the quickfire questions. I’ll ask you a few questions where you answer quickly, don’t have to explain too much, just the first answer that comes straight from your mind. Okay. So the first question is: who is someone in the industry that you learn a lot from?

Mark:
When I started the Pontian Wanton Noodle business—so I opened up to three stores—and the big boss who is actually the father of my good friend, we had a lot of talks over the phone and we shared. I see him going down to the shops, when he’s strict with the staff and how he uses the human touch to really show appreciation back to the staff—so this is something I learned.

I shout out—shout out his name because you said boss—but yeah, I shout out Mr. Harry. He’s very young—thanks for inspiring all the founders. He created it and he created this business when he was in his, I think, 50s or so. He had his ups and downs—he started it from scratch and then he opened up to I think 50–60 outlets at one point in time. So I really respect, like, his energy at that time.

Host:
Super, super. If you were to restart your journey, in your own words, what would you do differently?

Mark:
I would try to raise a lot more money and do things faster. Yeah, if I could. I know it’s not the best style based on what we went through, you mean—I look back, I see a lot of companies doing that with a certain amount of experience—get the right people, pay some people to do what they are good at doing and then grow a bit faster. I wouldn’t say do it too fast, but I think we were quite slow. We only started to really expand like four or five years ago.

So people think that, “Oh, second generation is starting over,” actually we’ve been around. But if I had more confidence, I’d just put myself out there, raise more money, and the mindset is different—okay, three or four shops a year, that kind of. Yeah. But I don’t know if the knowledge will apply, but it’s something I would want to try in my next business venture.

Host:
Now it’s not too late—you can find investors with common traction results, man, to do that. If you have a son or daughter that wants to join in this journey, what advice would you give him or her?

Mark:
I think—I know it’s a bit cheesy, but be genuine in the way you treat your staff, the way you do work, the way you approach problem solving. So when you really put yourself out there and you—you got to increase the salary of your staff or you want to make some changes—just be genuine about what you want to do. And I think that the company can feel it, and then somehow this culture is brought down. I think I’m quite lucky to have a lot of staff that stayed with me from day one.

Host:
Right. So will you let your son or daughter join you?

Mark:
Yes, I think I would. I think I would.

Host:
If we were to have a meal at your latest outlet, what would be the meal you order for your close friends to try?

Mark:
It would be the sesame oil chicken—classic, for sure, for sure. And maybe one herbal soup, and try. I want them—I want it to be like, just nice. I’m always very frustrated that friends—they want to support me—they order all. I always want them to—I feel like you didn’t get the right feeling, but it’s okay. But one main like, so for people—for claypot—just nice, have nice.

Host:
Do you have a social media that people can follow you—how do they follow Lau Wang’s journey?

Mark:
Yeah, maybe on Instagram—Mark Jeremy is my username. I’m a public profile, I don’t have many followers, but I’m starting to grow. I don’t really put my face out there previously also because I felt that when I was younger, I didn’t have the confidence to show that, oh, it’s not old men behind it. I was always like—yeah, nobody knows. Only like the last three, four years I feel that, okay, I’ve developed something that I genuinely feel that it’s mine. It’s not just a shop selling hot claypot dishes. I developed something that I feel for, and then I’m confident now and then, yeah, you can follow me from there and you can reach me.

If someone would like to start a business or would like to hear your advice, would you offer a claypot session or a coffee session to share some advice?

Mark:
Yeah, I would. I would. I’m always very open to sharing my journey. I failed so much, and I feel that I gained some traction now. I would like to hear what they are thinking as well. And of course, sharing is a must. I realize that a lot of bosses and businessmen—they are very sincere about sharing, and this is something that I learned from them.

Host:
Right. So now actually we have come to the end of our recording. Any final advice you want to share with our listeners?

Mark:
If you’re an entrepreneur, you will somehow find your way to problem solving—get things done. But if you’re not cut out for business, then yeah—you just know it. Yeah. An entrepreneur is an entrepreneur at heart. So do something like from my experience.

Host:
Thank you so much, man. Thank you so much for sharing. It’s a really amazing recording and I hope to have more clear of you.

Mark:
Yes, please. Thank you so much.

Host:
Awesome, man. Thank you.