November 18, 2024
SINGAPORE – There is no way to sugar-coat this: 2024 has been a bad year for restaurants in Singapore. Chefs and owners who were predicting a tough year have found the going worse than they had dreaded.
Every kind of food and beverage business has been hit – casual, mid-price, upscale, fine dining.
The strong Singapore dollar has made the Republic expensive for tourists. People here are saving to spend overseas. The goods and services tax hike has made diners more wary of spending. People are going across the Causeway for groceries, haircuts, meals and entertainment.
Chef Petrina Loh, 42, of Morsels in Dempsey Road, says: “The Singapore dollar is too strong and it is hurting the economy here. It’s become so expensive to eat out. Unless I am celebrating something, I would eat at home, cook something. I’m doing this. What more the rest of Singapore?”
Chef Joel Ong, 37, co-owner of Enjoy Eating House in Stevens Road and The Canteen by Enjoy in Jalan Besar with business partner James Ang, 37, says: “Every month, we ask each other, ‘Next month will be better, right?’”
Michelin stars are no guarantee of bums on seats. Michelin-starred establishments such as Sommer, La Dame de Pic, Braci and Chef Kang’s have closed.
Two restaurant groups – Japan Foods Holding, which runs brands such as Ajisen Ramen, Extra Virgin Pizza and Tokyo Shokudo; and TungLok, which has 22 restaurants in Singapore and 10 in Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines and Vietnam – issued profit warnings in October. They expect to incur net losses for the six months ended Sept 30.
According to data from the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (Acra), 3,616 food businesses started in 2023 and 2,748 stopped operating. Figures for 2024 run until October and, so far, 3,301 food businesses started up. Another 2,747 have wound up, one fewer than the whole of 2023.
Citing a song by American singer-songwriter John Mayer, chef Anthony Yeoh, 43, owner of Summer Hill, a bistro in Claymore Connect, says: “It feels like we’re all slow dancing in a burning room. Every other restaurant is making food that’s just as or more delicious and Instagrammable, with gorgeous dining rooms and the romanticised ideals of a restaurant to match. And there aren’t enough customers to fill them.”
He and the other chefs and owners The Straits Times spoke to say they are in survival mode – pulling out all the stops to keep going. Here are their strategies.
Total Football
808 Eating House and Province
Where: 153 Joo Chiat Road
Open: 808 Eating House – noon to 3pm, 5 to 11pm (Wednesdays to Fridays), 8am to 3pm, 5 to 11pm (Saturdays and Sundays), closed on Mondays and Tuesdays; Province – 12.30pm lunch seating, 6.15 and 8.30pm dinner seatings (Wednesdays to Sundays), closed on Mondays and Tuesdays
Tel: 8946-8089 (808 Eating House)/8075-1896 (Province)
Info: www.808eatinghouse.com, www.province.com.sg
Chefs Eugene Chee of 808 Eating House and Law Jia-Jun of Province, two restaurants that share the same space, do not deal in generalities.
Chef Chee, 31, will tell you that revenue for the 34-seat 808 Eating House is up 7 per cent so far in 2024, compared with 2023. Chef Law, 30, tells you the cancellation rate for his 10-seat, tasting menu restaurant is 26 per cent.
In a business where margins are razor-thin, precision counts.
Running a tight ship, keeping a close eye on costs – this is how they are powering through 2024.
Chef Chee says: “There is no one solution that solves everything. But what we do is run very, very lean and use common sense. Because of the labour crunch, we train the entire team to take on multiple roles. Chefs serve food and front-of-the-house staff help with food prep. Our dishwasher uncle trains the staff to wash dishes. We wash dishes too. We can’t pay someone $15 an hour to polish glasses.
“There’s a concept in soccer called Total Football. The players are skilful and flexible. Defenders can attack, attackers can defend. They play multiple roles and this allows them to move freely around the pitch.”
Chef Law Jia-Jun of Province. PHOTO: THE STRAITS TIMES
On the cancellations for Province, chef Law says: “It’s a huge rate and it has a demoralising effect, because we have spent so much time preparing the food.”
He has made changes to his reservation policy. Bookings for his tasting menu meals, priced at $68 at lunch and $148 at dinner, open two months in advance, compared with one month previously, so diners have more time to plan.
In 2023, diners could cancel their reservations just 24 hours ahead of their bookings, but in 2024, they have to do so 72 hours before.
“It was beneficial to customers, but not to us,” he says of the old cancellation policy. “Because this is how we keep costs down. We prepare just enough food.”
The two restaurants-in-one space concept has also meant that curious 808 diners return to dine at Province, and vice versa.
At 808, flexibility has widened the pool of potential diners. Starters for sharing are priced from $6 to $24, communal main courses from $22 to $36. The bill at dinner is $50 to $70 a person, with alcohol.
Chef Chee says: “It’s about flexible pricing. You can eat more and spend more, eat less and spend less.”
Honest plates
The Black Sheep Cafe
Where: 18 Norris Road
Open: 11.30am to 10pm (Mondays to Saturdays), closed on Sundays
Tel: 8918-4259
Info: www.theblacksheepcafe.com
The Black Sheep Cafe’s owner Ratha Krishnan serves food with a French accent. PHOTO: THE STRAITS TIMES
Diners at The Black Sheep Cafe in Little India are never going to find edible flowers or dots of sauce on the plates.
“I don’t do rangoli on my plates,” says owner Ratha Krishnan, 54, referring to the Indian art form in which colourful patterns are created on floors and tabletops using coloured sand and stones, flower petals and other materials.
What he likes to say is that he puts out honest plates in his 40-seat restaurant, which serves food with a French accent.
He says: “When you charge a certain price for a dish, there should be no gimmicks like reducing the portion of the main protein, or filling the plate with carbs and dots of sauce and flowers. It’s all about honesty. If diners see honesty on the plate and in the pricing, they come back.”
The most expensive dish on the menu is his Lamb Rack ($46.90). For that price, diners get three ribs, ratatouille, two other vegetables and jus. His Crispy Duck Confit ($25.90) comes with apple rosti, mango relish and a mesclun salad.
What hurts his business most is manpower woes. Things were good from October 2023 to January 2024 because he had adequate staff. But as these people went back to their pre-Covid-19 jobs, business began to decline.
The good news, though, is that it has been creeping up since August.
He attributes this to regulars bringing friends, who then become repeat customers because they find value on the plate.
Travellers who are in Little India for the food often drop by after their meals for coffee and his signature Pandan Souffle ($12.90).
The challenge now, he says, is to do more with fewer hands. He knows he has to improve the plating of his food so it looks attractive on social media, but is loath to go the flowers-and-dots route.
What he wants is value-added garnishes like, say, a tempura prawn atop a seafood stew, or interesting herbs such as lavender sorrel, which he says tastes like capers and would be good with a lemon-butter sauce.
Chef Ratha, who opened The Black Sheep Cafe in Seletar Hills in 2006, and has kept the business alive through pandemics, world financial crises and multiple relocations, says: “I have to be realistic and find ways to produce good food with less staff.
“If I have to, I may have to shrink the menu. But I can’t compromise on quality and value. People see us as a place for no-frills European food. That has stuck with us and I see no reason to change that.”
Cutting out GST
Morsels Restaurant & Gastro Wine Bar
Where: 01-04, 25 Dempsey Road
Open: Lunch – noon to 3pm (Tuesdays to Saturdays), 11.30am to 3pm (Sundays); dinner – 6 to 10pm (Tuesdays to Thursdays), 6 to 10.30pm (Fridays and Saturdays); closed on Mondays
Tel: 6266-3822
Info: www.morsels.com.sg
Chef Petrina Loh stopped collecting GST at her restaurant Morsels in May. PHOTO: THE STRAITS TIMES
Her accountant flagged it some years ago, but chef Petrina Loh never found the time to do it.
In May, she finally did – she stopped collecting the 9 per cent goods and services tax (GST) from diners. Restaurants with revenue of more than $1 million a year collect GST, but Morsels has not hit that level of revenue, and now does not collect the tax.
“I think it was a smart business move, looking at where the market is going,” the 42-year-old says. “As a diner, when I see the 10 per cent service charge and the 9 per cent GST on a restaurant bill, it can be a shocker.”
If the GST hike is a reason diners are staying away from Morsels, there is no reason to do so now. Her monthly accounting bill is half of what she used to pay, just by deregistering from GST collection.
She also keeps track of her electricity bills, and has locked down a good rate from the supplier.
To replace restaurant equipment, she browsed online, put the items she needed into her cart and waited for the Nov 11 Singles’ Day sales to check out.
“We are talking about survival mode,” she says.
Her 40-seat restaurant, known for its small plates ranging in price from $7.50 to $65, briefly switched to offering tasting menus in 2023.
She went back to a la carte because her customers had come to expect their favourite dishes when they visit.
In 2025, she plans to continue doing one-night themed events that she started in July. So far, she has done four of these, including an izakaya night and a seasonal sake night, where off-menu food is paired with sake and other drinks.
“You need something to pull people in,” she says, adding that she is planning to showcase Mangalica pork, which comes from a breed of pigs saved from extinction in Hungary. She has been using the product since 2014, and was recently appointed an ambassador by the National Association of Mangalica Breeders.
In October, she was in Hungary to visit farms, slaughter houses and restaurants that serve the pork.
Diners can look forward to dishes showcasing different cuts on the Morsels menu, and perhaps Hungarian wines to pair with them.
“This business, you need to make money to pay the bills,” chef Loh says. “But what’s fruitful is knowing where the products I use come from, knowing what I am feeding people.”
Courting Muslim diners
Asap & Co
Where: 01-01, 70 Telok Ayer Street
Open: 11am to 3pm, 5 to 11pm daily
Tel: 9101-7147
Info: @asapnco on Instagram
Doom and gloom is everywhere in F&B, but there is one shining spot in Telok Ayer. Revenue at the 50-seat steakhouse Asap & Co is up 25 per cent from 2023, says owner Isrudy Shaik, 46.
Business, he says, was down in June because the school holidays meant people were travelling and the office crowd in the area emptied out. He expects the same thing to happen in December.
But his restaurant, the only upscale halal steakhouse in Singapore, is thriving in part because it attracts Muslim diners from Indonesia, Brunei and the Middle East. Some diners in Malaysia also drop by regularly for steak.
A group of Indonesian influencers dined at the restaurant in August at the invitation of the Singapore Tourism Board, he says, and since then, he has seen waves of diners from the country.
The restaurant was also featured on HalalTrip, an online travel website for Muslim millennial and family travellers, and that brought in more diners too.
Asap & Co’s active social media presence has also netted diners from the Middle East.
“People also talk about us on Xiaohongshu,” Mr Isrudy says of the popular Chinese social media app. He adds that 10 to 15 per cent of his diners are from China.
It helps that the restaurant serves prime, dry-aged cuts of beef – prized Rubia Gallega (from $97 for a 300g striploin) from Spain, Miyazaki A4 wagyu ($197 for a 300g ribeye), Mayura wagyu ($137 for a 300g striploin) and beef from other premium brands.
Diners cut their steak with Laguiole knives from France, and the menu gives a newbie diner primers on marbling scores, different cuts of beef, the dry-ageing process and doneness of meat.
Mr Isrudy visits trade fairs to meet beef suppliers from all over the world, keeps tabs on winners of the World Steak Challenge and visits farms – such as those in Spain that produce Rubia Gallega beef – to improve on his knowledge and to add variety to his menu.
The work of a restaurateur never ends, says the father of four children aged three to 16.
“Sometimes when I go home, I think of the restaurant more than I think of my family,” he says. “My mother reminds me that family comes first.”
Content-creating chef
Enjoy Eating House
Where: 01-07 Mercure Singapore on Stevens, 30 Stevens Road
Open: 11.30am to midnight daily
Tel: 8511-1478
Info: @enjoyeatinghouse on Instagram
(From left) Chef Joel Ong and Mr James Ang from Enjoy Eating House. PHOTO: THE STRAITS TIMES
It used to be that Enjoy Eating House could count on social media influencers to boost its business.
Co-owners Joel Ong and James Ang, both 37, would invite them to dine. The resulting Instagram posts and TikTok videos flood the zones and diners come stampeding in. In one case, the effect lasted six months, chef Ong says.
Not any more. These days, there is barely a blip in sales.
He says: “We asked ourselves if business would have been worse if we didn’t do this. I have friends who own other restaurants texting me, asking if there has been a huge drop in business.”
The business partners, who have known each other for 25 years since they were classmates in Hai Sing Catholic School in Pasir Ris, opened Enjoy Eating House in Jalan Besar in 2019 and relocated it to Stevens Road in 2020. It has 60 seats.
The Jalan Besar space is now The Canteen by Enjoy, with 40 seats.
Mr Ang says: “These two months are the worst we have ever had. It’s strange because there is no demand for the content these influencers are producing. People are not looking for places to eat in Singapore, I suspect.”
So they are taking what they call a “long shot”. They want to build up chef Ong as a name that diners can trust. This, they think, might benefit their business in an indirect way.
Chef Ong says he has had good response to videos he has posted featuring recipes for the restaurant’s signature dishes. Another popular one, he says, was a video where he showed how he “zhng-ed”, or gussied up, frozen prata.
He has done a series of videos featuring restaurants he likes in Bangkok, and they recently spent three days in Ho Chi Minh City creating more content featuring restaurants there. The videos go on his Instagram and TikTok accounts with the handle @thechefjoelsg.
“We look at it from a chef’s point of view,” he says. “How the dishes are prepared and cooked.”
His videos attracted the attention of Kranji Countryside Association, a grouping of farms, in November 2023. It engaged him to do videos of his farm visits, and he also shows up at its farmers’ markets.
It is a good fit, chef Ong adds, because his restaurants have already been using produce from the farms.
Mr Ang says: “As a brand that’s been around for more than five years, it’s not easy to create a buzz. But we haven’t been doing that badly. We still have our regular customers.”
Chef Ong adds: “And we are gung-ho. We are not married, we don’t have kids. We have no time to think of anything but the business.”
By trolley, he did it
Summer Hill
Where: 02-17 Claymore Connect, 442 Orchard Road
Open: 11.30am to 2.30pm, 6 to 10.30pm (Tuesdays to Fridays), 6.30 to 10.30pm (Saturdays); Trolley Brunch – 11am to 1pm and 1.30 to 3.30pm (Saturdays and Sundays); closed on Mondays
Tel: 8690-5907
Info: summerhill.sg
Chef Anthony Yeoh at his restaurant, Summer Hill, serving clam “mouclade” to his guests. PHOTO: THE STRAITS TIMES
At the start of 2024, chef Anthony Yeoh knew he would be in trouble by March if business did not pick up.
“I was racking my brain,” says the 43-year-old owner of 60-seat Summer Hill. “Cash flow is the lifeblood of any business. I would have to do something or shut within a month or two.”
Within two weeks, he came up with the Trolley Brunch, an idea from his first restaurant, Cocotte. Summer Hill would serve brunch – a series of small-plate snacks and appetisers, then larger-format roasts and stews, and then desserts – to diners from trolleys.
He says: “It was desperation. I thought about what I could do to drum up business. When my back is up against the wall, my response is to give it one last go.”
He invited the media and influencers to the weekend brunches, which launched in April, and the gambit paid off. The meals are priced at $69 a person ($34.50 for kids aged four to 12) and there are two two-hour seatings each on Saturdays and Sundays.
The first menu featured the restaurant’s greatest hits, including marinated tomatoes, sausage rolls, fried chicken and the like. There was macaroni and cheese for kids.
The second menu was a Provencal Pique Nique, with Clams Marinere, Provencal Roasted Pork Belly and Lamb Shoulder Parmentier.
Autumn Abundance is the theme of the current menu, with offerings such as Grilled Trout Rilletes, Borderlaise Egg Cocotte, grilled chicken with honey and Dijon mustard, and Duck Confit Hash, among other offerings.
Staples include 3-Cheese Mac & Cheese and a snow-cone bar, where diners get cups of shaved ice they can decorate with syrups and fruit. These are designed for kids, and the bar opens one hour into brunch, when the kids are beginning to get restless. While they make their own snow cones, the parents can continue eating.
“We looked at who we wanted to get in,” he says. “We are a place that families love and the price point is intentional. Can we get people in at $100 a person? No. Let’s try $69. Have a small menu, but use quality ingredients.”
The brunch took off in a big way, and there was a waiting list. He had to figure out how he could keep up the quality of the food, and be able to serve more than 25 people at each seating.
He did it in stages, making adjustments along the way to keep things going smoothly. Now, he can serve 60 people at each seating.
The teak trolley, which he bought for $50 on Carousell, was soon supplemented with a second one, this time from a Sia Huat kitchen equipment warehouse sale. He also paid $50 for it.
Trolleys, it is safe to say, saved his business.
“2025? I am holding my breath,” he says.