The Beer Hawker

"Choping" food for the needy.

Thu, 04 Apr 2013 10:15:00 +0800

The past week saw an extremely heartwarming story on “suspended coffees” viral on Facebook.

If you’re not sure what that is, it’s when customers visiting a coffee shop pays for a few additional coffees which can then be gifted to the needy at the coffeeshop’s discretion. It sounds like a great way to extend a helping hand to those going through tough times, and it is.

It’s gained so much visibility and traction around the world it’s even spawned a hawker version in Singapore called CHOPE FOOD for the NEEDY. The idea is similar, except that instead of buying coffees you’re buying packets of food in advance for those who need them.

Now don’t get me wrong, I totally love the “Pay It Forward” concept ever since I watched the 2000 movie of the same name which starred Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt and Joel Haley Osment (of “I see dead people” fame). But those who are organizing this new movement may want to understand a little from the perspective of the hawker, or small business owner, being approached to give away their products to someone for free, even if someone else had already paid for it.

Getting hawkers to decide who to give the food to - assuming we’re honest, and not all of us will be - is difficult because it forces us to make a judgment call on who we think is needy, and who isn’t. Do we give to that elderly cleaner who cleans up your dirty tables and chairs in the hawker centre? Which cleaner? How about that foreign construction worker? It’s too easy to make the wrong call, and adds unnecessary stress.

Can you also imagine having to tell someone - within earshot of others in the queue - that they’ve been chosen for this privilege because of their downtrodden status? Last I checked, hawkers aren’t the most effective communicators. It can place shame on the recipient.

Again, I feel the need to stress that I am all for the movement. But the organizers may want to consider how to overcome some of these challenges, and communicate to participating members so they can ameliorate their approach when talking to hawkers.

We may then see an even more positive, successful campaign.

Hand-crafted, hand-carried beers.

Wed, 06 Feb 2013 00:33:00 +0800

Hand-crafted, hand-carried beers.:

A good friend - a former journalist - laments in this post that our country’s COE (certificate of entitlement, the permit which one requires to buy a vehicle in Singapore) system is well and truly broken.

He’s elucidated the situation far better than I can. I do want to add one point - that the current sky-high COE prices also affect small business owners like me.

With COE prices for CAT C vehicles - which includes those meant for carrying goods - at almost $60,000, there’s simply no way I can afford a goods vehicle for my small business.

Which means I’ll just have to continue carrying 12-18 bottles of beer each time by hand on public transport between 99 Bottles at East Coast and Good Beer in Chinatown for the foreseeable future.

A smile that made all the difference.

Mon, 07 Jan 2013 21:05:02 +0800

The lady owner of a nearby drinks stall hardly ever smiles. Perhaps it’s because she looks upon me as a competitor, but she always has a pained expression on her face whenever I greet her (and it’s not like I look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame).

On the other hand, the owner of another nearby drinks stall - a man - is always smiling. He’s cheery, laughs a lot too, and even once offered to share some of his beer with me.

Guess which stall I recommend to customers when they want something non-alcoholic?

Selling authenticity.

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 17:15:00 +0800

I learn more about business from my next door zi-char uncle, Chef Huang De Ming of Yang Ji, than half the business books I’ve read in my life added together (and I’ve read plenty).

Whenever the mood strikes him, Chef Huang would walk over - usually on a Thursday evening when Yang Ji is closed and he’s just there to prepare ingredients for the next day - and strike up a conversation. On a particular recent evening, he looked over to the closed 燕根 and sighed.

“$3,000 on a beautiful wooden signboard. What a waste,” he said, pointing to the elegantly carved wooden sign that now sits discarded along the common corridor.

He then confirmed what I initially believed. “$2.50 for a bowl of 燕根? Which customer would believe that you’d use authentic, top-quality birds’ nest?” Apparently, the soup they’d serve didn’t even contain birds’ nest, but used diced up white fungus and mushrooms to replicate its texture. Customers would try once… but never returned.

“They’d been so much better off if they’d really used bird’s nest, and charged accordingly,” Chef Huang mused. “All the rich old folks would drive up in their Mercedes and queue up. Or send their maids to come buy. Even if it cost $12 or $25 a bowl.”

“Now imagine if the owners were seen sitting in front of the stall cleaning and picking through real birds’ nest. Do you think they’d have a shortage of customers?”

“Most customers are not stupid,” he asserted. “They understand and pay for value. That’s why my customers come to me even though I sell easily the most expensive steamed fish head in Chinatown Complex.”

“My prawns are big and fresh, because I pay $15 per kilo for them from a commercial supplier that supplies restaurants. Same for my fish. My customers don’t complain about paying my prices because they can tell the difference in quality.”

Chef Huang looked again over to the dark, vacant stall previously occupied by 燕根 and then he said something that struck a deep chord in me.

“And just because you have a great idea or product does not mean you know how to sell it.”

Unrandom acts of kindness.

Thu, 06 Dec 2012 10:55:00 +0800

A hawker centre in Singapore is about the last place on Earth I expect to find kindness. After all, it’s a place where locals come for cheap food, oftentimes during crazy lunch hours when patience is short, tempers are frayed, queues horrifying and inconsiderate patrons hog seats with their bags and refuse to leave even long after they finish their meal and despite waiting patrons doing the ‘Care Bear Stare’ (not this Care Bear Stare).

But it exists. After over a year of working in Chinatown Complex, I’ve seen some acts of kindness that give me that little bit more hope in mankind.

Like how some of my fellow hawkers feed the destitute - and even some of the elderly cleaners - for free. Day in, day out. For people who don’t earn much, that’s humbling. When I see it, it puts a smile on my face.

And unlike some nasty patrons, there are others who only have kind words for cleaners such as Mr. Koh, the elderly cleaner with the crooked neck who cleans our zone with great dedication (if not quite so in blazingly-fast speed). Mr. Koh smells like how anyone would smell after doing the dirty job of cleaning a hawker centre for hours clearing your food detritus - i.e. nasty - but those customers don’t cringe their noses and are always quick to give a kind word of thanks or encouragement instead. It puts a smile on my face.

Or those customers who are quick to pull out a dollar for Madam Tan, the very old lady who peddles tissue paper around the complex. She likes coming to The Good Beer Company, because she knows the customers here tend to be more generous and pickings are better. Some of them even give her two dollars, which for three packets, makes some very expensive tissue paper. But they don’t mind, or care that she may be from a syndicate. This puts a smile on my face.

And definitely some of those (admittedly rare) customers I know who drop exceedingly big tips into Beer Uncle’s tip jar, because they’re just that type of kindhearted people who appreciate the work others put in for them. And how they love Beer Uncle.

I pretend not to notice, but I know who they are. I’d name names, but I know they rather remain anonymous.

People like that put a smile on my face.

Perspective.

Fri, 30 Nov 2012 13:39:00 +0800

“No outside food or drinks allowed.”

I used to be very annoyed whenever I saw this sign at a local hawker centre, food court or kopitiam. I always felt that it was as though the proprietor was so concerned with milking his customers of every single dollar that we weren’t allowed to buy something from somewhere else to consume on his premises.

After all, what if:

1. We were a group of people of whom some wanted to eat your food but some others don’t, and yet wanted to sit together?

2. Someone actually has a dietary restriction?

3. Specific food is required, such as baby food?

But now that I’m in the F&B business, I know the key reason for such a sign in many dining venues - and it’s not what most of us think. It really concerns a health safety issue. To be precise, it’s all about determining food poisoning vectors.

Let me explain. When diners in an establishment come down with a case of food poisoning, the business is fully shut down by the authorities to ascertain the source of contamination. A business with all food and drinks consumed onsite that’s actually produced within its own kitchen has a far easier task isolating the cause.

But a business that actually allows “outside food and drinks” has it harder, because it’s a lot more difficult to pinpoint the exact food contamination vectors. This may mean that the business is shut down for far longer until the authorities are satisfied - and means that it will bleed money until the suspension is over.

Now, consider when this happens to a hawker centre, like Chinatown Complex, with over 200 different food stalls. Can you imagine the difficulty of trying to figure out the source of a mass poisoning incident? Can you imagine 200 businesses shutting down - and the impact on those business owners - while investigations drag on? And it’s not like the authorities really care if these businesses go under if they lose too much money.

To get round this problem, many F&B businesses put up the “No outside food or drinks allowed” sign. (Of course, there would be those businesses that look at you as profit maximization sources and take advantage of this.) So no, they’re not really being anal for the sake of it.

Things like this I never knew as a customer. But now I know a bit better.

A totally different perspective.

The end of a road for one. And the beginning for another.

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 15:44:00 +0800

Last week, a neighbour around the corner from us at Chinatown Complex closed its shutters for the last time.

Why does its closure hold meaning for me? Well, the stall opened around the same time The Good Beer Company did. Which meant that it lasted roughly only about a year.

I still recall having a chat with the co-owners as both our stalls went underwent renovations. They were trying to introduce a new food dish, 燕根 (supposedly popular in Macau), to Singapore. It’s a thickened savoury soup made with bird’s nest, mushrooms, white fungus and other ingredients touted as “beneficial to health”. The co-owners were optimistic and were convinced that it would be a hit, especially with the older crowd that throngs Chinatown.

Each bowl would cost an affordable $2.50, they crowed, which fit the budget of their target audience.

Except I wasn’t convinced. In my mind I could imagine the incredulous looks - a bird’s nest dish at such a low price? You may be aware that bird’s nest can cost up to $3,000 per kilo, and the extremely rare and prized blood bird’s nest even costs up to $15,000 per kilo! How could one sell a bowl of this at $2.50? Most people, I believed, would walk away for fear they were paying for inferior quality bird’s nest, or worse, a fake health product.

But I kept those doubts to myself.

It was difficult to see them struggle over the past year. I’ve never seen a queue there, and you could sense the quiet desperation on the stall-owners’ faces as the days went by. But it’s not like they can drop prices any further to attract more customers.

And so finally they pulled the plug. Thankfully they did manage to recover their most of their costs, but that’s just mere consolation. The last I heard, they’ll be going to work for a friend’s restaurant instead.

A new stall has just started up a few doors down. It’s selling vadai, a savoury deep-fried Indian doughnut topped with a prawn and eaten with fresh green chilli. For them to sell this in Chinatown Complex, a Chinese enclave, takes steel balls.

It’ll be interesting to see how they fare.

Happy birthday to us.

Sat, 20 Oct 2012 14:14:22 +0800

The Good Beer Company is one today.

Beer Uncle is certainly glad - he happily SMSed me this morning to remind me of the milestone. After all, we lasted longer than his wildest estimates. Around eight months longer, probably.

What a journey it has been. I think I’ve learned more in this past year about business than my entire eleven years in the corporate world.

And while this probably sound clichéd, a huge thanks to all those who’ve stood by us, supported us, and shown us the love - and the contents of your wallets - that we don’t quite deserve over the past months.

I’d name you all, but you know who you are. Thank you.

Grow, like a champion, grow.

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 11:48:00 +0800

The Good Beer Company is expanding.

In a few days, we’re going to (finally) open 99 Bottles, our beer retail shop concept. The past two to three months have been a whirlwind of activity and given us not a small amount of stress, thanks in part to renovation delays, troubles with getting a phone line and a credit card machine set up. But - almost - all is good now.

I think some observers are surprised we haven’t gone ahead and opened more hawker stalls in other parts of the island. That had been the original idea, to penetrate the Singapore heartlands with little outlets promoting better beer than they initially had access to.

But over the past few months I’ve recognized that there’re far too many challenges to overcome in trying to replicate the Good Beer concept, mostly in trying to find the right locations as well as hire people to run those outlets.

In truth, what I’m far more worried about is that the craft beer community here in Singapore may be a lot smaller than I initially expected i.e. there’s just not enough demand to support additional outlets.

It’s also simply too easy to replicate the Good Beer concept. It takes only an existing drinks stall to stock just a few new varieties of beer to sufficiently compete against our outlet at Chinatown. Already there are some places which have picked up on this.

Which is why we turned to 99 Bottles instead. Growing the business in a different direction hopefully will help build our profile and portfolio quite a bit, while avoiding tiring out the hawker stall concept (or the local craft beer community).

We’ll see if 99 Bottles turns out to be a success in a year.

Putting the Empress Dowager in her place.

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 13:11:48 +0800

Like an Empress Dowager, my mom loves to hold court at The Good Beer Company.

Regulars would have noticed a jovial, portly elderly lady often seated at one of the tables right in front of our stall. If someone fitting that description ever offered you food or tidbits - some grilled or fried chicken wings, potato crisps or other snacks - when you’re seated in the area nursing a beer, that’s probably her.

Mom would even chat up random strangers, and discuss anything and everything under the sun. My friends would try to get her to spill some juicy gossip about my (relatively) misspent youth, some even get relationship advice from her (why, I don’t know).

She loves hanging out at The Good Beer Company because she enjoys watching her elder son - me - at work. She’d stare proudly, in a somewhat creepy way, as I go about serving customers or even if I’m just stacking beers on the shelves.

I know she’s proud of me. And I don’t mind that at all - until it interferes with business.

The problem is that Mom has a nasty habit of parking herself in a spot and start ordering Beer Uncle and I around.

“Order dinner for me. I want fish-head noodles tonight.”

“Get me a beer. I want something light and fruity.”

“No peanuts? Where are my peanuts?”

She’d do this even if we were busy serving customers. She’d order us around, even though there’s a relatively huge-ass sign hanging above that says “SELF-SERVICE”. She’d come on Fridays, on our busiest evenings, and place her demands, #likeaboss.

She’d make Beer Uncle - her brother-in-law - scurry around. I know he’s unhappy about it sometimes, but he bears with it.

And I know her long enough to know that she does this is because it is an ego trip for her - that as a mother she gets special attention, and that people around her is at her beck-and-call.

Well, the thing is, I am trying to run a business and make a living here. I have customers to serve, and a hundred things to do at the same time. When I’m at work, I don’t have time to listen to you talk about your bad luck at mahjong, how well your favourite nephew is doing, why I should vote PAP (yeah, really, why?), how useless your colleague is, how your younger son - my brother - is not answering your calls, or that your best friend’s son is getting married. I don’t have the time to run to another stall to order your meal, and get you an extra pair of chopsticks or some extra chilli. And when we’re busy, I most certainly don’t have luxury to sit down and have a beer with you.

Neither does Beer Uncle.

Because of this, I told her nicely to let me know in advance when she’d be coming, and also not to come on Friday evenings because that’s when we’re most busy.

And true to form, like a recalcitrant child testing the boundaries of a parent’s patience, Mom appeared the very next Friday. Without any warning.

“Oh, it was a last-minute decision,” was her breezy excuse.

So I totally ignored her. Her demands went unanswered; I gave her nary a glance. I showed her a magnificent display of how grunting was as a form of (non) communication.

Three days later, I told her - in no uncertain terms, albeit as respectfully as a son should to his own mother - exactly why I ignored her. And how her presence can be disruptive to business.

“What if a customer doesn’t know you’re my mother and wonder why they’re getting inferior service?”

“Do you really expect me to run your errands when I’m serving my customers?”

So I told her if she’d ever want to come down on Fridays again I’m going to treat her like any customer - pay full price, self-service. No. special. treatment.

Yes, I laid down the law.

How can you do that to your own mother, I hear you decry.

Well I can, and I did.

Because when it comes to business there’s a time and place when you can be family, and there are times that you simply can’t. Small business owners need to draw the line when it comes to family - you have to decide what’s the right thing for the business, and how your family fits into that. And that especially matters when you have employees - if they see that you can bend or break the rules for family, why should they have any respect for those same rules either?

And put it this way - if you’re a salaried worker, you certainly don’t expect your parents to visit you at your workplace in Shenton Way at any time while you’re busy earning a living

So why should I?

One year on.

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 15:23:46 +0800

It was around this time last year that I was suddenly, and inexplicably, told that I was being retrenched.

That happened during a routine weekly meeting where each employee would be called to give updates on our areas of work, so I didn’t suspect that losing my job was on the agenda.

It had nothing to do with my performance, they explained. The company was changing direction and would be restructuring, and my position was simply being made redundant. I wasn’t the only one being affected, they told me - as though that made me feel any better.

Being asked to leave was a shock for two reasons. The first was that it was pretty much a dream job for me - I was crazy about the products we were making, the company’s culture was fantastic and I enjoyed working with the colleagues that I had. The pay, while wasn’t great, was decent enough for a job I loved.

But perhaps the bigger damage was to my ego - while I’ve left many jobs on my own accord before, I’ve never been fired or retrenched. It was a new, gaping wound, one I’ve never suffered from, ever.

I was shocked and angry, but what choice did I have?

But I did have a choice, and I made it. I could easily have had found another corporate job - in fact I received a couple of offers immediately after people found out I was leaving - but it was then that I decided I’d wouldn’t want to put my fate into the hands of others again. And the only way is to do that is to become an entrepreneur; my own boss. If I die, it’ll be at my own hands.

And so I did.

Today I run The Good Beer Company, and we’re doing sufficiently well enough for me to consider next steps. I often look back on that fateful day and wonder if I’d have ever taken the plunge if I hadn’t been retrenched.

I guess I will never know.

Trying to make everybody happy is the surest way to failure.

Fri, 29 Jun 2012 16:33:03 +0800

“You should add fans or air-conditioning here. It’s so hot!”

“Why don’t you serve non-alcoholic drinks?”

“Maybe you should sell other alcoholic drinks - wine, sake or whiskey - as well!”

“How about having a mobile credit card payment solution - using the iPad! - at your stall? Why not accept credit card payments at all?!”

I get these questions and suggestions all the time. All these and more. Many The Good Beer Company customers take it upon themselves to think of ideas to improve our business.

Don’t get me wrong - I think it’s great. I love customer feedback. And it says a lot when customers get so involved in the business that they’re wracking their brains to see how they can help our fledgling business survive (and maybe even thrive). And in many cases we’ve actually implemented some suggestions - supplementing expensive branded beer glasses with cheap IKEA ones to deter theft, or putting up a sign to remind customers to keep the chiller doors closed so beers remain cold, for example.

We’d love to implement all these suggestions - OK, those that make good sense, at least - in the business, but the truth is that we simply can’t please everyone. We can’t put in air-conditioning (that’s really up to NEA), reconfigure or add extra seating (also up to NEA), and accept reservations (that’s against NEA regulations). We don’t bring in other alcoholic beverages (because our hawker stall liquor license only allows us to sell beers and stouts), or non-alcoholic drinks (because that just dilutes our core offerings).

Because for a business, trying to make everybody happy is the surest way to failure. You can only please some people all the time, or most people some of the time.

We’re incredibly mindful of why The Good Beer Company is here in Chinatown Complex in the first place: to offer beer lovers a chance to try amazing beers in a hawker centre setting at reasonable prices.

Everything else is, or can be, a distraction.

Remembering Father.

Sun, 17 Jun 2012 17:25:00 +0800

Although to be honest, I don’t quite remember the man. I can recall what he looked like, but that’s about it.

My father passed away when I was just ten - my last memories of him was a man chained to a dialysis machine, wasting away as his kidneys slowly failed him at the prime of his life. I don’t ever believe my brother - who was just seven then - and I were even at his deathbed when his life finally ebbed away.

What I do know of the man was how Mom spoke of him - a faithful man who dearly loved his family, loyal to his friends and one who indulged in too much char kway teow. I know she still grieves after all these years.

Maybe forgetfulness was, as a child, a form of self-coping mechanism; shutting out painful memories, a way to deal with loss. Some of our time together still stick in the mind, of course, especially our weekly weekend rituals at Chinatown Complex, but not much else.

My only family left from Dad’s side is Beer Uncle. In terms of character, Beer Uncle is about as polar opposite to Father as can be possible. Where Dad was sociable and had many friends, Beer Uncle was an introvert and never really had any. And while my Mom still speaks lovingly of the man she married, Beer Uncle was once married for just three months (his wife left him; we never really knew why).

It’s Father’s Day today.

I’ve decided that the best way to honour the father I’ve not known long enough, is to provide for his sole surviving sibling.

I’m truly glad that Beer Uncle is at the happiest he’s been in recent times, ever since he starting working at The Good Beer Company. He’s met so many customers who’ve quickly become his friends and listen to his cheerful chatter. And however morbid this may sound, I hope that the day when Beer Uncle finally passes on, he’d be surrounded by these friends he never knew he’d ever have and would miss him dearly.

I think my sociable father would have found this strangely apt.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad.

Discounting friends.

Fri, 08 Jun 2012 16:24:32 +0800

As a rule of thumb, I don’t give friends any discounts at The Good Beer Company.

Feel free to call me cheap, cheapskate or someone who doesn’t value friendship. That’s fine.

But there are reasons why I don’t do it. One reason is that I believe in being fair and providing equal treatment to customers. If you’ve been in any customer-facing capacity, you know how difficult it is to explain to another customer why I’m giving someone else a discount and not them - they’re simply not going to accept an “because he’s my friend” answer.

It also makes bad business practice. Most small business owners will tell you that much of their business in their company’s early days come from friends. But the trouble is that such business acts as an artificial stimulant to your bottom line and can distort the true picture of how well your company is truly doing.

The most important reason, however, is that - as queer as it may sound - I feel that offering them a discount simply insults them. Let me elaborate.

Many of my friends who come down and support The Good Beer Company do so because they truly believe in what I’m doing, and want to be part of its (hopefully eventual) success. I’ve had friends - some I’ve not seen in donkey years - turn up to offer support. A few even dropped by to say hi even though they don’t drink alcohol.

When someone goes all the way to help you, the best reply you can give them is to say “thank you” and accept it graciously. Offering a discount - in my opinion - would have cheapened that.

And to the credit of all my friends, none of them have asked, or even expected, a discount. (On the contrary, many of them slyly slipped generous tips into Beer Uncle’s tip box).

That’s how much I know they love me and value our friendship.

And I’m truly grateful.

So, to these friends, a big “Thank You”. You know who you are.

I love you, you pay my rent.

Wed, 23 May 2012 15:49:23 +0800

This was a difficult post to write.

One of the key reasons why I started The Good Beer Company in Chinatown Complex was because, as a hawker centre operated by the National Environment Agency (NEA), stall rental prices can be lower and more stable than spaces run by commercial landlords. Indeed, one hears and gets frightened of horror stories of landlords who insist on one-sided contracts and who obscenely jacking up rents every chance they get, especially when they see that your business is even marginally successful.

In August last year, I bidded successfully for our current stall in Chinatown Complex - a 3-metre by 3-metre space - for the price of S$1605 (including GST) a month. There was a minimum rental bid of S$850 on the stall, which NEA had assessed as the fair value market rental rate.

If you included Town Council maintenance fees and cleaning services, I’d be paying over S$2000 each month. While this was far higher than what many of the existing hawkers in Chinatown are paying (many of them fall under a subsidy scheme as original stallholders relocated from the streets in the early 1970s) of under $600, this amount can be lower than rents outside.

But the plot turns.

In April this year, NEA decided to tweak its hawker stall rental scheme. Aside from banning subletting - a great move to remove the blight of a rampant black market leading to overheated rents - the agency also quietly removed the minimum rental bid prices for its hawker stalls. This means that an interested party can bid any amount, for a stall.

One can only surmise that the key reason for doing so was to encourage more hawkers to take up the profession. With 10 new hawker centres to be opened in the next ten years, one major worry the authorities surely harboured was that there won’t be enough hawkers to populate those hawker centres. This is also likely why Dr. Vivian Balakrishnan, our Minister for Environment and Water Resources (which oversees the NEA), came out to say he hoped to see more Singaporeans pursue a hawking profession. And of course, no minimum bid prices would likely mean the possibility of lower rents, and thereby making taking up hawking a more financially viable one. Or so the belief goes.

What NEA possibly didn’t quite anticipate was the reaction of the market. After the market got over the shock, many realized that they could bid as low as possible for a stall. In April, a stall in Taman Jurong received an S$88 bid; even crazier, someone bidded for a stall in Ang Mo Kio for just S$1!

Surely this is good news, you argue. Cheaper rents means more affordable food for consumers, right? Perhaps.

But imagine this: if the $1 bid for the Ang Mo Kio stall is successful, how do you think the other hawkers in the same area feel?

Put it another way: how would you feel if you just bought a car, Certificate of Entitlement (COE) and all, and the very next month the Land Transport Authority decided to do away with the COE scheme? Yup, that’s right. Fuck.

Fellow hawkers I speak to are extremely upset about this issue. Hell, I’m really pissed as well. There’s a bid for a neighbouring hawker stall in Chinatown Complex that, if successful, would go for S$400/month. That’s cheaper than even subsidized rents in the same area! I’ll be paying four times that amount for my stall, and it’s just a stall just a few stalls down the row.

Can you imagine how I feel? What happened to paying a fair market value? I don’t know about you, but I could be bringing home over S$1000 more each month - which is a lot of money. I’m fortunate in that I do run a profitable business, but I cannot imagine those hawkers who have been struggling with high rents and now may be faced with imminent, unfair competition from a new competitor who pay far cheaper rents and hence can undercut prices, are feeling at the moment. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist (or an economist) to see this implication: that in order to attract new hawkers into the profession, they may just forced the existing generation of hawkers out of the business.

What we have here is a scheme that has all the makings of the right intentions, but so poor in its implementation. It’s no wonder that NEA had to rush and tweak the scheme just over a month into the removal of the minimum bid prices.

What going to be the potential fallout? I can’t say.

All I know now is that I’m paying a high price for my rent. And I’m not happy about it.

Clean up the cleaning agencies, please.

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 15:22:09 +0800

Earlier this year, just before Chinese New Year, some of you may remember that I complained on Facebook that the cleaning situation in Chinatown Complex was in a mess. Apparently, the cleaning contractor had absconded with all the money that us stall owners had paid up for that month, and could not be found.

Now, Chinatown is busiest during the month leading up to Chinese New Year, which meant that the centre was always crowded. Obviously by this time the cleaners had stopped cleaning, and the centre became utterly filthy. If you’ve visited us during that period, I’m sure you’d remember.

What made it worse was that the local hawkers’ committee, the Town Council and the NEA weren’t able to find sufficient cleaners to help us tide over this period. We stall holders even had to pay an additional (and exorbitant) sum to find an interim contractor to take over while we looked for a more permanent solution.

The amount demanded for was so much that each cleaner we hired would actually make more than us hawkers on a per-hour basis! As you can imagine many stall holders refused to pay, accusing the authorities of holding us to ransom - an NEA official even threatened to shut us all down for potential health safety violations during a closed door session - and we reached an unfortunate impasse. This situation was even reported by the local Chinese media (for which us stallholders were chastised by someone from the authorities for making them look bad in that very same closed door session).

Thankfully, a compromise was later reached, and, more importantly, a new cleaning contractor came in fast enough to prevent the dispute from boiling over. However, each stall holder now had to pay around 20% more for cleaning services under the new contract.

We would find out later that the cleaners who did the actual filthy work of cleaning up food scraps and clearing the soiled crockery, hadn’t been paid by their boss for months, some even up to four months.

In case you’re wondering, there are 200 stalls in Chinatown Complex, and each stall pays an average of $250 per month for cleaning services. This means that the runaway boss absconded with around $50,000 for that month alone. If he hadn’t paid his workers, that would mean he’s sitting pretty on easily $100,000-150,000. And his workers? Left with not a single cent.

Hence it is not surprising to read this in our local papers. It’s far too easy to set up a cleaning company as a scam to pull exactly that sort of stunt we at Chinatown Complex suffered earlier this year.

It angers me that the people most affected by this are the cleaners. They are already looked upon as the blue-collar of blue-collar workers, working insane hours at a very filthy and unappreciated job. The lowest rungs of society.

And you know what? Almost all of them who now work in Chinatown Complex are locals. And they are being taken advantage of by their own. I’ll leave you to think upon that.

So yes, we need the authorities to clean up the cleaning agencies, instead of feeding the monster by insisting on ever lower quotes from these fly-by-night operators. We need to pay a suitable wage to cleaners - and not the contractors.

Meanwhile at The Good Beer Company we’ve started to put out a tray for customers to return empty bottles and glasses. While this will certainly help to cut down on lost (and stolen) glasses, more importantly it eases a little load off Beer Uncle and the elderly cleaning uncle with the crooked neck who works his rounds in our area.

Granted, it’s a very small step in the grand scheme of things, but I’d like to see it as a way to retrain Singaporeans - and others - to be more gracious and that it only takes a little effort to help make someone else’ life better.

For those of you who already return empty glasses and bottles on your own accord, thank you. You may not know how much that means to the cleaning uncle.

Encounters with angry, bitter old men.

Fri, 06 Apr 2012 17:17:00 +0800

It was a sense of déjà vu.

My friends on Facebook would recall the time, some two months after The Good Beer Company opened, that I complained of an elderly gentleman who decided to use the back of my hawker stall as his personal latrine. When confronted, the old man claimed that he couldn’t control his bladder (despite the fact he walked a distance from where he was to my stall, when it was pretty much the same distance to the public toilet). He then turned hostile and nasty when I told him not to do it again.

A couple of weeks later, this old man returned. He created a mess in front of our stall, pouring ABC Stout all over the table, seats and floor. He even chased away a Bangladeshi cleaner who tried to clear up his mess. “Fuck off, Bangra!” he screamed at the poor man just trying to do his job, and proceeded to abuse Beer Uncle for being useless. There wasn’t much we could do - it is a public space after all. Thankfully, a customer - who happened to be the husband of an ex-colleague- chased him away (a story in itself).

This time, we were in the middle of filming - a group of young aspiring filmmakers wanted to do a documentary episode on us - when another old man appeared, and decided to help himself to the beers we had arranged on the table. I stopped him, of course, but he probably didn’t like my face and wanted to pick a fight. In a fit of anger I kicked his slippers away, which only enraged him further. We returned to the stall, but this old man followed and heckled us. When we all ignored him, he then started to harass one of the young ladies in the camera crew.

This was when I couldn’t take it anymore, and walked up to plant myself between him and the poor girl. We probably stood there eye-to-eye for almost a full minute, when suddenly a shadow loomed over us.

It was John, one of the partners from Jungle Beer, who just happened to arrive to deliver some beer. Adi, his partner and chief brewer at Jungle Beer, ambled up to take a position on the other side of the old man, effectively fencing him off. If you know John and Adi, let’s just say they’re pretty big guys, standing at least 1.8 metres each.

“Go away,” John told him. “Nobody wants you here.” The old man looked furtively around.

“Go away. Nobody likes you,” John added. With that, his face totally changed. John apparently struck a very raw nerve with that last statement. He finally left, realizing he was outnumbered - but more probably, totally unliked and unwanted by the people around. And note that this was also on camera, the intrepid young filmmakers leaving their video recorders on upon sensing a good story (or the need for evidence).

Incidences like these make me more sad than angry. This old man, like the one before him, was probably hurt some way or another at some point in their lives. Life has probably thrown them a very bad turn which led to them being extremely bitter, old men with a chip on their shoulder against the world. It’s sad really.

Yet while I sympathize, I have a business to run.

More than a Beer Uncle.

Fri, 23 Mar 2012 15:11:03 +0800

Beer Uncle, as many of you have found out by now, is really my uncle. His real name is Goh Koon Hong, and he’s my late father’s younger brother. He’s the only uncle on my father’s side I’ve ever known - the rest of my father’s siblings having died during World War II.

I’m always very heartened by the comments I hear about him - many of our patrons have nothing but praise for him. Thank you for that. So I thought I’d take a little time here to share more about Beer Uncle.

When I first started on the idea of The Good Beer Company, Beer Uncle and I weren’t too close. My grandma - his mother - had passed away some time back so we had less reason to see each other. But the bigger reason - which we didn’t know at that time - was that Beer Uncle had become pretty much a lonely hermit, as he was embarrassed about his vocation. He had become an estate cleaner, working for one of the town councils. He was originally working as an admin staff for them, but got transferred to doing maintenance and cleaning some time later.

Yup. A 63-year old man, pretty much forced into a filthy job alongside our younger, more illustrious foreign labor. I suspect it was done to help balance out the local/foreign worker quota restrictions, but I don’t have proof.

As you can imagine, he didn’t quite enjoy his line of work. So despite his reservations, he hopped onto the idea of working with me as a hawker assistant selling beer in Chinatown. If nothing else, he can get away from the filth and sometimes dangerous work.

Five months down the road, Beer Uncle, as he is now affectionately known, is promoting and recommending beer to curious patrons. He jokes and banters with customers, and many even call him the unofficial mascot of The Good Beer Company.

He’s really more than that. This may surprise you, but most don’t know that Beer Uncle is also a shareholder of the business. This means he does have input into how we conduct the business, what beers we pick, and in which direction the business grows.

We’ve had potential distributors come in to discuss business who don’t acknowledge Beer Uncle’s existence even if he stood in their face, because they think he’s merely some elderly hired help. These people, we choose not to work with - and I don’t care how good their beers are. I bet they’d be surprised if they knew the reason why we snub them.

On the other hand, we’ve had awesome business partners who treat him like the precious elderly gentleman that he is. And it’s not even because they know he is family… that’s just the way they are, and that’s how they treat people. It just shows their character. And these people, we work with.

Beer Uncle is family, business mascot… and more.

Beer and music.

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 12:28:09 +0800

One of the oft-most questions asked by customers at The Good Beer Company, especially new ones facing the Great Beer Chiller, is this: “So which beer is good?” It’s an extremely challenging question to answer.

Aside from the fact it’s like trying to make a mother answer the question of which of her children she loves most, beer is deeply personal. What you like and what someone else likes is likely very different! What beers you’d prefer can also vary depending on your current mood and external factors such as the weather. But that is also why there’s such a wide variety of beer styles out there, to suit each of our individual tastes, as well as cater to your prevailing mood and needs at that certain time.

I liken appreciating beer to appreciating music.

Let’s assume that a beer is a certain musical note. A ‘DO’, for example. You may like that particular beer, and drink it often. But hitting multiple DOs on a piano, and music you do not make. You can tire of it. When you try a different beer, you’re essentially hitting a different musical note. Sure, sometimes you hit a wrong note and cringe.

But try enough beers and soon enough you’ll be hitting a nice, resonant chord. Feeling happy today? How about a ‘A’ chord? Emotionally down? Perhaps a C#m may fit you better.

(Interestingly, an auntie who tried a Stone Brewing Co’s Oaked Arrogant Bastard Ale said the beer made her feel even more despondent. Suicidal, even.)

Soon enough, you’ll even find out what kind of music you’d prefer.

Don’t be surprised that when you ask me which beers are good at The Good Beer Company, I end up telling you what I like. I love alternative rock, so that’s what I’ll share with you.

It's the little things that matter.

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 17:33:00 +0800

Like many of his generation, Beer Uncle is extremely frugal. He’d scrimp and save on the littlest things - what you’d find insignificant, he’ll find a reason to keep and reuse. Like plastic bags, for example.

So it happens that I came by the stall one Saturday afternoon, and found that Beer Uncle had sneakily kept the lights of the stall turned off despite the fact we were in operation. He gave the reason that the lights generated a lot of heat - and it was a really warm day as well - but I knew that it was because he was trying to save electricity. And I know that because at home, he lives in near utter darkness to minimize the electricity use.

It’s sometimes difficult to talk to him as a boss - he’s both older as well as a relative - so I had to weigh my words carefully before explaining that saving money this way was unacceptable. “What if someone thinks that we aren’t open?” I asked Beer Uncle. Our light switches were connected to the illumination of our front and rear signboards.

“What if people go away thinking, ‘If they (The Good Beer Company) would try to save money this way, why wouldn’t they cut corners with their products or service?” From his crestfallen expression it was clear he hadn’t thought of these possible consequences.

One of the lessons I learned from Chef Huang De Ming, during our recent chat, was that little things do matter. While we were conversing, he was carefully going through a pile of vegetables, trimming leaves and anything that remotely looked inedible. “Customers can spot and pick on the littlest things that you’d never had spotted,” he had said. He even soaks his vegetables for hours, to rid them of pesticides and foreign particles.

“In most cases, they won’t even tell you… they just don’t come back.”

“I do this, and that is why my customers don’t complain that I charge $8 for a simple plate of vegetables you get elsewhere for $5.” Eat a mouthful of sand, he added, and it doesn’t matter how wonderful the vegetables taste.

I recounted that story to Beer Uncle. He has immense respect for Chef Huang, so I hope he’d look at things from a new perspective.

It’s the little things that get you.