Even with restaurants scrambling to alter their business models, it’s inevitable that the F&B industry will see a drop in demand without the option to dine in. This is especially true for restaurants in malls, including singer-cum-music producer Hong Junyang’s four Thai boat noodle joints. “For day-to-day meals, people might go to the nearby hawker centre – but they’d rarely walk to the mall to tapow their lunch,” says the 40-year-old Project Superstar alum, who set up his four franchise stores of The Original Boat Noodle at Bugis Junction and Changi City Point, among other locations. That said, his eateries do offer delivery via Foodpanda as well as takeaway.
This switch to delivery mode affects his latest venture as well - Bananabro, a franchised Indian banana leaf rice restaurant from Kuala Lumpur, which opened in Changi City Point less than a month ago. It’s so new that they’re “still queueing to get onto delivery platforms”, he says. In the meantime, they’ve prepped takeaway sets and are launching their own delivery service via WhatsApp.
As for his other ventures like Taiwanese bubble tea franchise joint Machi Machi on Arab Street, he says: “We’ll lose the office crowd, who usually go out to lunch and get bubble tea on the way back,” he says. Despite bubble tea’s extreme popularity – capable of spurring snaking queues even during a pandemic, consumers have “too many lifestyle decisions” to make for him to accurately read the tea leaves on how that business will fare.
Not so for Caf, the star’s first brand of his own. Caf, which is short for Clickafood SG, serves up grub across four different cuisines, a selection of Instagrammable drinks and cutesy décor to boot. As a cloud kitchen, “it’s made for delivery” (available on both Foodpanda and Deliveroo), meaning it’d do “okay” despite losing out on the Sunday brunch crowd.
Order via delivery here: The Original Boat Noodle; Machi Machi; Caf