Rubbish Eat Rubbish Grow

In case you don’t know, I started and ended a home business, selling Ho’s Brisk. It was an all-inclusive 6-course meal serving 6-8 people at $288, with a focus on beef brisket. Since I know how to eat, I knew what I wanted exactly in each course. I wanted good quality food that I only serve to my family and friends. For example, the coleslaw, I didn’t want it drench in mayo dressing (sorry, KFC). I wanted it crisp and light and tangy as a counterbalance to the beef – and I used organic homemade dressing for it. The bread was made from scratch for 24 hours, using ethical flour that profits go back to the workers, not the boss alone. All my packaging are recycled and some of them carbon-neutral.

The product wasn’t the problem. I got really positive feedback. Miss Tam Chiak said it was super impressive. Veronica Phua said her entire family loved it, especially her Canadian brother-in-law who praised it to the sky. Chefs and restauranteurs told me it was restaurant standard. And there were repeated, returning customers. They said that the beef was way better than some other famous restaurants’. A rich guy said he would have invested in my business if he wasn’t going to move to Japan.

So here are some reasons why it failed:

1. My heart wasn’t in it that I didn’t even blog about it! I didn’t even advertise to my main target audience! I feel that there are many things I want to do with my life and while I enjoy cooking, cooking isn’t one of it. I wanted to do something to make the world a better place. I get great joy when customers said their parties were successes and I get joy when families and friends gathered around the table to eat my food. But I wanted to see tangible ways that my efforts make the world better.
   
2. It requires constant marketing and advertising. Whenever I advertise or someone blogs or instagrams about it, I get customers then it dies down. Since my heart wasn’t in it, and since I was doing other things at once, I was lazy to do constant marketing.
   
3. Since orders came trickling, it was just not worth it. I needed 4 orders a day to make the business profitable and I usually get 1 or 2. The preparation started 3 days before the order as I cook the beef for 3 days. And on the day itself, I spent the whole day from 8am to 4pm cooking. By the time the orders were delivered, I was thoroughly exhausted.
   
4. People feedback-ed that it was pricy and the more expensive a product, the fewer people would buy it. In this economy, it is a hard sell. And the cost prices of the ingredients were already expensive since I used very, very good quality stuff. I couldn’t buy the ingredients in bulk since I didn’t have the customer flow.
   
5. Businesses depends on the kindness of strangers and more importantly, friends. I realise some people whom I formerly know them as friends–just kidding!–were reluctant to help, whether it was to get a discount from suppliers, or getting information, or helping to post on their instagram to say a few kind words, or just purchasing a set. This was very saddening and disappointing to me to know that friends whom I know for decades, whom I treat as great friends, wouldn’t help. On the other hand, there were really helpful acquaintances who went all the way out to help me. These people, I’ll forever remember their kindness.
   

Written by Dr. A. Nathanael Ho.