The house that satay built
They moved from a 3-room flat to a 3-storey bungalow, thanks to a secret satay recipe, which they safely encrypted in a computer
By Tan May Ping
January 04, 2006
SHHHH...this family has a saucy secret.
(From left) Mr Mohamed Raffi, is wife Madam Jalilah and their son Shariffudin outside their new bungalow. Pics/DAVID TAN,NG XINYAO
It's locked away in a computer and protected by an encryption code.
They guard it jealously. After all, it boosted their business and helped them move out of a 3-room flat into a spacious bungalow.
The secret: Recipe for the satay marinade and peanut gravy.
That's what made Mr Mohamed Raffi Bashir, 44, and Madam Jalilah Surip, 42, millionaires.
'My wife spent a long time developing the recipe. If we teach others, they might leave us and become our competitors,' said Mr Mohd Raffi.
The recipe is stored in a computer which their 21-year-old son has access to. And it's been encrypted in case the computer is ever compromised.
The Satay King and Queen of Sembawang took five years to perfect it.
With just $300, they started their business in a cramped stall outside a coffee shop at Block 101 Yishun Avenue 5 more than 20 years ago.
They made their 3-room flat in Yishun their mini 'factory', producing up to 5,000 sticks a day.
Today, they are the owners of the Singapore Satay Club with a turnover of up to $180,000 a month.
Long queues are common at the Singapore Satay Club.
And in October they moved into a 3-storey, $1.88 million bungalow just behind the Satay Club.
It all started after Mr Mohd Raffi met his wife in 1981 while still serving NS. Within three years, they got married and had their only child, a boy.
From then, they focused on making their business a success. It began in 1983 while they were still engaged.
As the oldest son of seven children, he had to support the family after his father died while he was serving NS. Madam Jalilah was the youngest of six children of hawkers.
He had completed his O Levels while she did her A Level equivalent in Malaysia.
Madam Jalilah suggested they sell satay as 'there would be volume' as customers usually ate 10 to 20 satays in a sitting.
'My wife's uncle was also a satay seller at the old Esplanade Satay Club and he was doing well,' said Mr Mohd Raffi.
They managed to scrape together $300 from their savings to pay $150 for rental and the rest for buying equipment.
After five years, business started picking up.
'When business was good, the other tenants started to complain about the smoke and we were forced to move to different coffee shops in Yishun,' he said.
He estimated they moved 15 times in three years, all in Yishun, because the other tenants were not happy with them as they were doing very well.
But the loyal customers continued to support them. By now, they had five stalls in Yishun.
All this while, Madam Jalilah toiled in the kitchen of their 3-room flat.
She would wake up at 7am to marinate the satay and skewer them on to the sticks before making the gravy.
She went from producing 2,000 sticks when they first moved in in 1986 to churning out 5,000 sticks.
SLEPT FOR ONE HOUR
'During festive periods, I slept for only one hour. But I really enjoyed my work,' said Madam Jalilah.
One day, an officer from the then Environment Ministry dropped by and advised them to find a proper factory.
They sold their flat for $86,000 in 1992 so they could expand their business. They rented a flat.
They set up their factory with the money and some savings in a rented two-storey shophouse along Jalan Malu-Malu in Sembawang. They called it Jalilah's Sate Solo, after the region in Indonesia where her father came from.
At the peak, there were 30 workers as they supplied 40,000 sticks to 28 outlets.
The couple decided to scale down when they ran into problems with collecting money as the people whom they were supplying to wouldn't pay on time.
A year later, they heard that many tenants were leaving the Sembawang Shopping Centre for the new Sun Plaza nearby. They thought it was a golden opportunity to move in and invested $500,000 for their Satay Club.
To raise the money, he sold his Mercedes Benz and had $350,000 in savings. The rest he borrowed.
They put up radio advertisements and soon business was thriving and they recouped their investment within the first year.
In 2003, Madam Jalilah even worked with a local engineer to develop a machine to make the skewering process easier and faster.
It took six months of research, and their four machines cost $190,000, which was funded partly with a bank loan. By now they were living in a five-room flat in Sembawang.
Today, the 460 sq m satay club, which employs 30 people, is equivalent to four 5-room flats. It serves between 7,000 and 10,000 sticks a day.
The satay is made in their factory nearby. It has 12 workers.
Once a week, Mr Mohd Raffi mixes the spices for the marinade and peanut gravy. He spends four hours making 400kg of marinade to last a week. None of the workers are allowed to mix them.
Their next project is to open 200 kiosks all over Singapore to sell satay and other healthy snacks.
For that, they are working with agencies to find unemployed people who 'have a passion for food and interacting with people' to run the stalls and eventually become owners.
What is the secret to success?
Said Mr Mohd Raffi: 'Will power, and passion for what we are doing. We are also very lucky to have a good product that tastes very good.'
$1.88m house was her birthday gift
THE couple's bungalow at Jalan Malu-Malu in Sembawang Springs Estate is just 20 steps from their factory, and a 10-minute walk to their Satay Club.
The 3-storey house with a land area of 606 sq m - about five 5-room flats - was a birthday present for Madam Jalilah last February from her husband.
They spent $150,000 on renovations and $300,000 on furnishings, most of which was imported. Their spacious living and dining rooms are bedecked with ornate European classical furniture.
There are 15 crystal chandeliers costing from $2,000 to $13,000 each, and a collection of more than 50 vases and lamps costing from $200 to more than $1,000 each.
The centrepiece in the living room is an $18,000 sofa set from Italy. The most expensive piece of furniture is the $38,000 Italian dining table that can seat 12 people. It weighs 250kg.
There are three spacious bedrooms, an outdoor dining area and a 37 sq m music studio for their son.
They own two Mercedez Benz cars - E240 and SLK 200 - which was a 21st birthday present for their son.
Why spend so much on the house?
'We are still doing a lot of research for our business and most of our time is spent at home,' said Mr Mohd Raffi.
'My wife and I have acquired that kind of lifestyle and we wanted to create a conducive environment to think.'
