More Than Just Food For Thought

It may be a fight for survival. But for players in the food and beverage industry, unity gives each a stronger voice. Beppe de Vito and Loh Lik Peng — two restaurateurs whose text messages morphed into the #savefnbsg movement — reflect on the pandemic's devastating impact and what it’ll take to emerge stronger.

- Daven Wu

Loh Lik Peng remembers when he began to really worry about the effects of Covid-19.

“We started seeing it earlier than most in Singapore because of our overseas operations,” Loh says, referring to his Unlisted Collection group’s network of hotels and restaurants in China, Europe, Singapore and Australia. Yet, even he didn’t expect the virus to spread so quickly from China and with such penetration. “In our hotels, we went from 90 percent occupancy to practically zero in a week. We closed Shanghai in early January, even before Chinese New Year. By February, we knew it was bad, even worse than expected. In March, our outlets in Ireland, Australia and England all shut down within a week of each other.”

At his Singapore restaurants, he moved swiftly to reduce orders of perishables and cut all external contractors. Cannily anticipating a time when we would no longer be able to dine in-house, he pivoted early and switched a lot of business towards home delivery: “We shrank to where we needed.”

Still, like everyone else, he reeled from disbelief. The social distancing measures bit deep, more so as these were consolidated into a more formal lockdown on March 31. The already bruised revenue streams from his 17 restaurants — which include Cloudstreet, Nouri and Burnt Ends — began to haemorrhage badly. Nervously, Loh looked around him.

Singapore’s food and beverage industry, long a power player that adds at least $14.4bn to the gross domestic product, is anchored by some 18,000 restaurants (excluding hawkers) and employs 220,000 people. How badly must they be faring, he wondered.