Maybe Tony should do like this instead, small shop selling a few items of super high quality, and then slowly branch out.
The initial investment of this small stall is only $13,000 according to the article. This ex-celebrity is much smarter in doing business than Tony. Sorry to say that.
It is so much lower than that Japanese restaurant. That Japanese restaurant menu alone is $12,000. Cashflow bro, cashflow is king in business. No cashflow, no business, bro.
https://www.8days.sg/eatanddrink/ne...le-korean-hawker-stall-after-leaving-13023862
Cassandra See Opens Home-Style Korean Hawker Stall After Leaving Star Army Stew
Expect dishes like Fried Rice With Spam, Kimchi Ramen & Tobokki cooked by a Korean chef.
Former actress
Cassandra See has been bitten by the F&B bug again. Just eight months after leaving the now-defunct
Star Army Stew, she has opened another kopitiam stall selling Korean food.
Called Hungry Korean, the fortnight-old stall in Geylang Bahru, a 5-minute walk from Geylang Bahru MRT station, specialises in “home-style” K-nosh like rice bowls, burgers, stews, and ramyeon.
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What happened to two-year-old Star Army Stew?
While the 50-year-old declines to elaborate, she tells 8days.sg she parted ways with her business partners, who include former Ch 8 sweetheart Tang Miaoling, at the end of 2019 due to “differences in how the business should be run”. Cassandra emphasises that this has not affected the BFFs’ relationship and that Miaoling has even helped out at Hungry Korean. Star Army Stew's Ang Mo Kio stall shuttered during the Circuit Breaker in April, after two years of operations.
It’s a pity, says Cassandra, as the business was initially doing “very, very well”. She adds: “We were making money in the first few months, but we were all so tired physically and mentally because we were doing everything ourselves.” When the business stabilised and Cassandra began taking on acting jobs, they left their staff to run the stall. And that’s when the food and service quality started to decline.
“When I am at the stall, I taste everything that I cook and make sure that the soup is good before I serve it. But not my staff. They did not control the food quality. To them, this is just a job — there is no passion. I can give you the same recipe, right down to the last gram, but if you don’t cook with your heart, it will not taste as good,” she sighs.
“We also received complaints about my former staff’s attitude. He’d brush away customers saying ‘don’t have, don’t have’,” she demonstrates, waving her hand dismissively.
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If at first you don't succeed, try again
But the setback hasn’t put Cassandra off dabbling in the F&B biz. In fact, when her friend who owns the Geylang Bahru coffee shop asked if she was interested in taking over a stall, she couldn’t resist. It took her just one and a half months to rope in four new business partners, spruce up the space, and her new F&B baby was born. The partners invested a total of about $13,000 to start Hungry Korean.
“I love the food business and feeding people. Despite the hard work and long hours, I only remember the good times. Maybe it’s the adrenaline rush. I don’t remember washing plates till 3am, but I remember chatting with customers and I am very happy when I see them enjoying my food,” she beams. “My friends say I am very jian (a sucker for hardship).”
Though Star Army Stew was short-lived, Cassandra says the experience she’s gained and lessons learned are priceless. She now knows the ins and outs of running an F&B biz, as well as “how to manage my partners and staff”. While she used to handle everything in her previous business, from cooking to marketing, Cassandra takes on more of a “managing role” now. “I roped in partners who can help me run the operations. I employed a chef ‘cos I don’t want the food quality to be affected when I go back to work, and she also has a share in the business, so this ensures she is [committed],” she explains.
Having run a Korean food stall before, it made sense for Cassandra to stick with what she does best. “Korean food is something that I am familiar with. Since I have the experience, I just have to enhance it to make it better,” she says.
While her main focus now is on getting Hungry Korean off the ground, Cassandra says acting remains her passion and she will take on ad hoc projects when the business finds its feet. “I actually turned down a role [to set up Hungry Korean], and they were paying me quite a lot!” she laments. “But I am the pillar of this business, so I need to do my part.”
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Finding opportunities in times of crisis
Why start a new venture during the time of COVID-19 when businesses are struggling to stay afloat?
“There are always opportunities in times of crisis,” reasons Cassandra. While restaurants shuttered due to high rent and overheads, she noticed hawker stalls in the heartlands thriving as people worked from home and also became more careful with their spending. “This gave me the idea of serving restaurant-quality food at wallet-friendly prices,” she says. “My chef is Korean and used to run a restaurant with her mum in Hong Kong. The items on our menu are the same as what she cooks for her family — healthy comfort food, like mum’s cooking.”
But good food alone is not enough. As people are eating out less, the food has to be easy to eat and deliver too, she points out. “I realised that Singaporeans like things that are simple and tasty like cai png (economical rice), where you have some meat, vegetables, and that’s it, so we decided to offer more easy-to-eat rice bowls. They have been very popular with the residents here.”
Prices range from $4.80 for a Spam with Fried Egg Rice Bowl to $11.90 for a bowl of Baby Back Short Rib Stew. There are also the usual suspects like Kimchi Ramen ($5.80) and Kimchi Jjigae (kimchi stew) ($6.80).
While Cassandra contemplated offering her popular army stew, she eventually decided against it due to the relatively small seating area at the coffee shop. She shares: “Army stew [is a communal food] and people tend to share and slowly savour it. But now, with the safe distancing measures, seating capacity at the kopitiam is reduced, so it is not ideal for ‘steamboat-style’ food.”
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New Galbi Stew selling like hotcakes
Response to Hungry Korean’s homey nosh has been very encouraging so far. The towkay reveals that they “make at least $600 a day”, not bad for a stall that has only been open for two weeks. “The foot traffic here is much better than at my previous stall at Ang Mo Kio. It is also a younger crowd and the residents are more willing to spend and try new dishes. Yesterday, we created a new dish — galbi stew — and it was sold out. There was a customer who wanted to reserve three bowls of it for the next day, and even offered to pay me first, but I turned him down,” laughs Cassandra.
Hungry Korean had its official opening last Saturday (Aug 8) and Cassandra’s celeb pals like Apple Hong, Terence Cao and former actress Cherie Lim have dropped by to show their support. And her cute 20-year-old son, Lukas (who is half-German)? “He says he will come down to help out. I hope he does and the girls will queue up to get a glimpse at him,” she jokes.
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Cassandra with her partners: (From left) Alfred Chiao, chef Gina An & Alvin Chiao
Cassandra says once they sort out the opening kinks, Hungry Korean will expand its menu as well as offer its dishes on food delivery apps. The ambitious hawkerpreneur also hopes to turn her nook into a mini mod kopitiam, complete with counter seats and high tables along the sidewalk.
She says: “If I am allowed, I want to add counter seats around my stall so [we can interact with customers as we prepare the food] and add high tables outside to enhance the image of the coffee shop. You don’t get this concept in coffee shops. I have already bought the chairs so I hope the government will approve my concept. I will try to sell this idea to them.”
What to eat at Hungry Korean — Cassandra’s recommendations
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Baby Back Short Rib Rice Bowl $6.80; $11.90 for stew (8 DAYS Pick!)
Originally only available as a stew, the succulent pork ribs were so popular they started offering it as a rice bowl. And we can see why. The meaty pork ribs, slowly braised in a soy sauce-based sauce with BBQ sauce and honey, are tender and fall-off-the-bone. We also can’t get enough of the pleasantly sweet gravy which is a great complement to the rice.
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Volcano Carbonara with Egg, $5.80
This is not a ramen version of pasta carbonara, but a comforting bowl of fiery instant noodles, amped up with milk and kimchi. A popular dish with youngsters in Korea, “the ‘volcano’ refers to its spicy flavour and the ‘carbonara’ means it is cooked with milk”. While the noodles are the instant variety, the soup is made from scratch by simmering ingredients like pork bone, onions and chilli powder overnight, the creamy soup is umami and slurp-worthy. Despite claims that the spiciness has made “grown men cry”, the heat was comfortable for us chilli fiends.
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Beef Bulgogi with Cheese burger $6.80 (8 DAYS Pick!)
The moreish burger boasts savoury-sweet thin slices of rib-eye beef that’s been marinated for 48 hours in stuff like soy sauce, garlic, ginger, onion juice and honey. It’s then topped with seared onions, spring onions, and cheese, all sandwiched between lightly-toasted sesame seed buns and a piquant hit of mustard. And if you want even more kick, zhng it with some sour-spicy kimchi.
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Galbi Rice Bowl, $6.80; $11.90 for stew alone
According to Cassandra, the Galbi Stew, which is not officially on the menu yet, is a crowd favourite. Perhaps it’s because we sampled the rice bowl before operating hours, the stewed beef short ribs, though tender, were not as flavourful as we’d hoped for. It probably needs more simmering on the stove or resting time for all the flavours to emerge.
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Tobokki, $2.50 for seven pieces, add $1.80 for fish cake skewer
There’s also a small selection of nibbles including tobokki (Korean rice cakes), served in a paper cup like how the popular street snack usually is in Korea. The chewy rice cakes come slathered with a sweet and mildly spicy sauce. For $2.50, it’s not bad as a nibble. We recommend getting it with the spongy fish cake for an added punch of brininess.
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Bottom line
Simple, homey Korean fare that's tasty and easy on the pocket. We like that they offer hearty beef and pork rib stews apart from the usual K-hawker stall options. But give them time to iron out their opening kinks before heading down — the staff got our orders wrong when we returned for a second visit.
Hungry Korean is at #01-3521, 57 Geylang Bahru, S330057. Open daily except Mon 12pm-9pm. https://www.facebook.com/hungrykoreanfood/
Photos: Alvin Teo
This is the only video an F&B business needs to make. A review of the food. No need to sing to promote the food. People need to know reviews on how the food is like for potential customers. In depth review. I know Tony has a few videos on food review, pls do more of these. Dish by dish in detail too. go viral on it. Singing is for singers, it will do nothing about your food.
