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SINGAPORE – When Singapore entered the blackout period in April, local restaurant Swee Choon Tim Sum saw its sales drop around 30 percent, while profits fell about 40 percent.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, there were often meandering queues outside their Jalan Besar exit.
To minimize its losses from restaurant sales, the restaurant turned to online sales and continued to serve customers through food delivery services, Trade and Industry Minister Chan Chun Sing said on Monday (Nov 30) during a visit to Swee Choon.
It also stepped up digital marketing and leveraged additional food delivery platforms to reach more customers, supported by Enterprise Singapore’s food delivery booster package to subsidize delivery costs, Chan said.
The package was presented in April, during the circuit breaker, and covered part of the commission charged by the FoodPanda, Deliveroo and GrabFood delivery platforms.
Chan said these efforts have helped increase food delivery Swee Choon’s sales significantly, from less than 1 percent to about 60 percent of its existing average monthly income during the breaker.
He added that while food at home has resumed, food delivery sales continue to “contribute between 25 to 30 percent” of his monthly income, he added.
The adoption of digital technologies has also helped Swee Choon understand where his customers order their food from, so that he can make better decisions about opening future outlets, Chan said.
Ernest Ting, owner of Swee Choon’s third generation, said the 58-year-old restaurant intends to open two more cloud kitchens, in addition to the first in Tampines that opened last week.
“There are plans to go north in the Sengkang, Punggol area and west. So these are three groups that we have identified in recent months where we want to have cloud kitchens,” he added.
Cloud kitchens are centralized kitchens where two or more restaurants are located in the same space for delivery services.
On Monday, Chan urged the food and beverage sector not to wait for the Covid-19 situation to pass before thinking of new business models.
“Use the Covid-19 crisis, turn it into an opportunity,” he said.
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