For many businesses owners, the Covid-19 pandemic period has been a trying time. Having to keep the company afloat and profitable was no easy feat.
During the Circuit Breaker when a stay-home order was enforced, many Singaporeans opted for food deliveries or simply bought takeaways near their vicinity. Many restaurants then started facing decline in business and different obstacles. From managing the sales of the place to keeping up the morale of the employees, there were just so much for F&B business owners to think about.
In this article, we have interviewed owners of two different cafes in Singapore! They have awesomely agreed to share with us their stories on how their businesses coped with the Covid-19 pandemic. The cafes are Foreword Coffee Roasters and Bloom Artisan cafe. Read on to find out the story behind these two popular and trendy hangout spots!
Foreword Coffee Roasters
From Foreword Coffee Roasters, we interviewed Wei Jie, the co-founder and director of the company.
They are a coffee company and a social enterprise, with the mission to inspire the can-do spirit to realise the potential in every individual. Across the 3 outlets in Singapore, an inclusive work environment is created for people with disabilities, special needs, and mental health conditions. They also aim to achieve an equitable and sustainable value chain empowering stakeholders from farm to cup. Another goal is to encourage conscious consumer consumption by providing incentives and social nudges to use less and waste less.
Their coffee beans are specially sourced from Asia, in particular from China (Yunnan), Laos, Thailand, and Indonesia.
How was your business affected by Covid-19?
In terms of sales, when Circuit Breaker started, cafe sales dropped by more than 70%. Online sales sharply rose by 10 times. However, the increase in online orders did not fully cover the loss in revenue from our cafes.
Thanks to kind sponsors like Temasek Foundation and DBS, we made bottled coffee and gave them out to thank our healthcare heroes across all 20 polyclinics in Singapore and the staff in Tan Tock Seng Hospital.
Employees - wise, routines of our part-time staff were disrupted. Full-time staff were redeployed to work in different outlets. To keep them motivated and driven, staff were engaged more frequently via digital means such as Whatsapp and Zoom conferences. Through the government support, we were thankfully able to pay the full salaries of our full-time employees as well. Additional paid leaves could be given even when the cafes were not open. For the part-time employees, payout partial salaries could be awarded even though they were not working.
How did your business tide over the period? What were some things that you did?
To tide through this period, we invested more resources in ecommerce and the online website.
We launched our Shopee platform, got onboard ShopBack, and the three major food delivery platforms. We launched a new website in April, and refreshed our website again in October. Check out their Shopee marketplace here !
We also took this time to do cafe training for some of our staff before they return to work. Moving forward we will invest more time into every individual based on what they can and cannot do, with the hopes that when the time comes for our cafe expansion plans, our team will be ready for it :)
Address:
Foreword Coffee Roasters @ CHI: 18 Jln Tan Tock Seng, Level 4 Centre for Healthcare Innovation, Singapore 308443
Opening Hours: Monday to Friday: 8AM - 4.30PM
Saturday and Sunday: Closed
Foreword Coffee Roasters @ TSH: 28 Orchard Rd, Singapore 238832
Opening Hours: Monday to Friday: 9AM - 5PM
Saturday and Sunday: 11AM - 4PM
Foreword Coffee Roasters @ CSC: 31 North Buona Vista Rd, Singapore 275983
Opening Hours: Tuesday to Friday: 8AM - 4PM
Saturday to Monday: Closed
Website | Instagram | Facebook
Bloom Artisan Cafe
As for Bloom Artisan, it is a cosy and homely cafe in Yishun Singapore committed to offering affordable, handcrafted gelato, bakes and beverages that can be enjoyed by people from all walks of life!
100% homemade with their very own Bloom Artisan recipes, they believe in classic ol’ simplicity of reaping what you sow - which goes into the craft of their making and baking, using only top-quality ingredients and grinding it out themselves. Constantly keeping our community in mind, they also aim to give back by doing what they can to support charities and nonprofits, whether it’s through the more tangible donations or by simply being an extra voice.
How was your business affected by Covid-19?
For sales, it was slightly hard to gauge as the business only started after the Circuit Breaker. However, to ensure safe distancing for the patrons dining in, we had to ask customers to either wait until a table frees up or take away instead. This had affected sales. In terms of public engagement, social media platforms were primarily used to promote the cafe. As more were staying home during the pandemic, it helped to build a strong customer base around the vicinity.
As for the morale of employees, the staff began working with the Covid-19 restrictions being the status quo, so there was not much of a comparative difference. One critical aspect was that the pandemic resulted in a delay of plans for the opening of the cafe. However, it was also a blessing in disguise since many were spending more time on the internet, which helped us gain more awareness quickly. This was accelerated with food bloggers who chanced upon our shop online and decided to come down for a review.
How did your business tide over the period? What were some things that you did?
We were extremely flexible with our recipe for the gelato, as well as the opening hours in the beginning. Other than getting feedback from the customers, we constantly checked reviews on various applications such as Facebook, Google Maps Reviews and food bloggers. We also had to adjust our opening hours during the weekdays to adjust to the crowd.
With the bulk of our customers coming from the neighbourhood, we had to constantly think of new flavours and rotate the current flavours. This is to ensure that the customers do not get bored of the old flavours, while experimenting with new ideas. For example, we introduced exciting seasonal flavours (e.g. pumpkin with cinnamon gelato for Halloween), as well as flavours requested by the customers (e.g. earl grey lavender gelato).
Address: 645 Yishun Street 61 #01-322 Singapore, Singapore 760645
Opening Hours: Wednesday to Monday: 12PM - 10PM
Tuesday: Closed
