Previously in Part 4, I mentioned that I am going back to Malaysia from the UK.
I was super anxious passing through the immigration, worried that there might be some issues with my visa just like Jerry (my boyfriend back then, who is now my husband ❤️ ). Fortunate enough, I passed through the immigration and custom smoothly and finally touched down in my home country after 12 hours, lovely Malaysia.
Jerry and I back in Malaysia
As mentioned in Part 4, Jerry was planning on a cafe business right after he got back to Malaysia, and I joined him on the journey right after I touched down. We looked around areas in Selangor for a good location for our cafe.
It was not just the 2 of us, there were 2 other friends who joined us in the business. One of them will be helping out in the shop and the other one invested some capital into the cafe.
After a few shop viewings and discussions, we decided to open our cafe in Bandar Puteri, Puchong. It was a new area with quite a few factories and residential areas nearby. We thought there's a potential to it. The concept of the cafe was a live band cafe, which was a hit back then. One of our friends can sing pretty well, hence he could be the main singer in the cafe. We even built a stage for that.
Jerry and I were preparing for the shop's opening until midnight
We got the location, rented the shop, and the renovation started. The renovation took slightly more than a month. After that, we started hiring, purchased the equipment for the kitchen, buying furniture and decorations for the shop.
My friend and I were the ones who in charge of the drinks menu and the bar. We had over 100 types of drinks on the menu and we need to test every single one of them with different formulas. Both of us almost threw up tasting those drinks every day. I'm sure we drank more than 200 cups of drinks in 3 days 🤢
Our Match'us Cafe
In 2 months, our cafe was officially opened. It was named "Match'Us", with the meaning of "we will match what you need".
Our cafe was a fusion cuisine cafe with Western and Chinese cuisines, we baked our own cakes too. We hired 2 master chefs, one who cooked authentic western food and bake cakes and the other one cooked Chinese dishes.
My best friend visited me in my cafe
We received overwhelmed responses and good feedback when we first started. We were confident that our food was the best in that area. If you ask me whether I still think the same right now, my answer will be: Yes, our food was the best in the area back then.
Not just the food, but the service as well. We trained our staffs to welcome the customers (we were the first eatery doing such greeting back then), be alert all the time by keeping an eye on the customers, with the mission of giving the customers the best dining experience in our cafe.
However, things did not turn out to be as favorable as we expected. The business started to go downhill a few months later and we started losing money by the fifth month of operating the cafe. It was due to a few factors:
Overhead Expenses
- We hired 12 waiter/waitress (2 shifts with 6 people per shift)
- We hired 8 people in the kitchen including 2 master chefs
- Rental - We did not rent only one floor to starts, but the whole 3 stories. Thinking we would expand to the second floor and we can use the third floor as a hostel for our staffs. We paid RM6,500 every month, and after 5 months, the other 2 stories were still empty.
Cash Flow and Stocks Wastage
- Our cash flow was tight because we had too many items in the menu where we need to stock up the ingredients for each item, some of them just gone to waste because no one ordered it.
Traffic Flow
- It was a newly developed area. Our customers were limited.
- The residences and the working crowd would not come to our cafe every day.
- It's challenging for us to get new customers after a while.
We tried our best to cut down our expenses and to attract more customers. However, the business failed miserably after 10 months. We made silly decisions in this business, and the biggest mistakes of all was that we did not spend each penny and cent wisely, which led us to failure.
We learned our lesson the hard way.
So here's what we learned from the failure of Match'Us Cafe:
Proper Research and Not Rushing
- We opened the cafe way too fast, thinking it would not have much differences compare to open a Chippy in the UK. Without proper research on the location and the traffic flow, we decided the location based on our assumptions.
One Step At A Time
- We were too optimistic to think about expansion before we started. We could rent the ground floor where we had business for RM3,500 instead of paying RM6,500 every month for the whole 3 stories. The other 2 stories were still vacant when we ended the business.
- We hired way too many staffs before we really had the business volume.
Proper Planning
- We wasted money to build a stage, but in the end, we spent money to get rid of it as there was not enough space for our customers to sit.
- Instead of going for a second-hand equipment, which was 30%-40% cheaper, every equipment we bought was brand new.
- The menu of our cafe was with more than 200 items for our customers to choose from, including food, desserts, and drinks. Yes, you read it right, it was 200+! Other than that, we have weekly set lunch menu, 3 Western and 3 Chinese cuisines, which were not in the main menu. We had a huge number of kitchen wastage because of that. After all, those popular ones were actually less than 10 in the menu.
We invested all our hard earned money in the UK - more than RM500,000 into the business and we lost it all. We were running out of funds to run the business. Yet, Jerry was not giving it up just like that. He tried to raise funds to save the business. That, lead him to a con man who made us seriously in debt. Living was an issue for us until we need to pawn something that's meaningful to us.
Who did he meet? What happened then? How did we get over it?
It will be revealed in Part 6.
Related Post:
My Part 1 Story: What I have been through in the UK when I was 19 years old
My Part 2 Story: I met the angels in the UK
My Part 3 Story: Goodbye Jerry
My Part 4 Story: I got myself 3 Apprentices in the UK and was arranged for a marriage