Day: October 8, 2021

Covid-19: Here’s a list of F&B businesses in S’pore that have closed or is closing down in 2021

This week we said our online goodbyes to Ben’s Cookies, who will be shuttering its last Singapore outlet at Wisma Atria.

Many even went down to buy the cookies and show their support.

The closure of this F&B outlet is just another of a string of many other F&B outlets that have closed shop due to the pandemic, which kept many people at home and ordering food online.

We take a look at the many eateries that have been put out of business since the start of this year.

Swee Kee Eating House

The zi char firm which has been at Amoy Street for over 26 years has closed its doors on May 30, 2021. Its Cantonese-style fish soup shop has a history of more than 80 years.

The eating house cited rising operating costs as the main challenge.

In a Facebook post, the eatery said that the challenges of Covid-19 and a CBD location have proven too much and too challenging for the business to “sustain with continued monthly losses in this current climate”.

The eatery’s Greenwood and Outram outlets remain open.

Singapore instituted a one-month ban on dine-ins in May, triggered by a rise in Covid-19 community cases. Working from home then became the default, causing many F&B operators in the CBD to struggle with a lack of orders.

Yan Kee Noodle House

Well known to CBD workers and clubbers, the eatery shut its doors in July, 2021.

The eatery, located along Circular Road, is most famous for its dry bak chor mee sua. It has been around since 2008.

According to a customer who spoke to the eatery, the shop representative said it has closed its original location but it may reopen somewhere else when Covid-19 settles.

We say goodbye to its reasonably priced comfort food and noodles costing around $3 to $5 a bowl.

Omakase Burger

Popular chain Omakase Burger, known for its American-style gourmet smashed beef burgers is closing all outlets in Singapore. Its last operating day will be on October 27, 2021.

It posted on social media saying that it is with “great sadness” that it will be closing its flagship outlet at Orchard Central, and four other pop-up outlets at Bukit Timah, Bedok, East Coast, and One-North.

That’s after nine years of great memories and millions of burgers sold.

The business is being put on hiatus due to Covid-19.

“This is not goodbye. It’s see you later, my friend.”

The burger chain will be going into “hibernation” and reopen at an unspecified date, its owner Cheng Hsin Yao told 8days.

Thai Pan Restaurant

The 18-year-old zi char store located within Mandarin Gardens condominium served its last customer on June 30, 2021. 

A rising cost and a dip in footfall caused the owner to shutter the business, according to Shin Min Daily News.

The business was unable to cope with the economic impact of Covid-19. It had negotiated for lower rental over the past two years but poor business led owner Yang to decide to close.

The restaurant is best known for its butter squid and fried rice.

Slate

The brunch restaurant located along Purvis Street closed its doors shortly after opening in February 2020. It announced the closure on Facebook in May, 2021.

Although it was able to tide over the Circuit Breaker last year, the heightened alert and prolonged period of restrictions caused it to lose footfall and contributed to slow sales.

We say goodbye to its spring chicken and pancake and sideways omelette.

The business has since pivoted to a bakery that is online delivery focused.

Rice Table

The 24-year-old Indonesian restaurant decided to close the business in May, 2021, in view of the expiration of its lease.

In a Facebook post, the team shared that they made the decision “not to continue operating”.

The restaurant gave no further reasons for the sudden shut-down other than its lease reaching an end, but many customers suspect the reason to be pandemic driven.

Rice Table thanked all the staff and regular customers who kept the business alive over the years in the Facebook post.

Located at International Building along Orchard Road, the well-known Indonesian restaurant sold comfort food including tahu telor, grilled chicken, coconut curry vegetables, and beef rendang.

Waffletown

Situated at Balmoral Plaza, the homegrown family restaurant shuttered after 21 years of operations on May 2, 2021.

The closure was due to rental problems.

The business is known for simple and affordable waffles, for example, its fried chicken and waffles combo which costs S$6.50.

Their waffles are usually paired with sausages, eggs, or ice cream.

It was a popular hangout and study spot for students from schools in the vicinity, such as Anglo-Chinese School (Barker Road), St. Joseph’s Institution, and Singapore Chinese Girls’ School.

Nineteen80

The three-year-old retro snack and arcade bar that pays homage to all things ‘80s has closed for good. 

In a statement issued by nightlife operator A Phat Cat Collective, it attributed the closure to “more unforeseen disruptions and even more mounting COVID restrictions for pivoted nightlife”.

“It seems less and less viable and even harder for us to continue further. It is with great sadness that we have decided to close.”

The nightclub-turned-diner had to close suddenly for two weeks in July when the directive came to shut all nightlife establishments operating as F&B businesses.

The measure came after a Covid-19 cluster linked to several KTV lounges was believed to have breached rules after converting to F&B operations. The announcement was said to have affected more than 400 operators.

The diner had tried to pivot with island-wide deliveries, but the prolonged impact of low footfall due to more working from home finally caused the business to shut for good.

Rails

Located next to Nineteen80 along Tanjong Pagar Road, the restaurant and cocktail bar that played house and disco music has also closed.

It is the sister bar of Nineteen80 and had faced the same plight due to ongoing challenges and disruptions of operating a bar due to the nightlife pandemic-driven restrictions that were imposed.

Originally a bar and dance club set to open in April 2020, the short-lived restaurant had finally opened as a bar and lounge in February 2021.

Grub Burger Bistro

The bistro located within Bishan-Ang Mo Kio park has been there for nine years. It will be moving out by January next year. 

Grub said that its lease would not be renewed next year. The team is coming to terms with the shock and the sad realisation that the space in the park will no longer be their shop.

Grub said it had built the restaurant from an empty patch of land.

The group is actively searching for a place it can potentially relocate to, but it did not specify where and when. The management said that the current priority at the moment is to ensure that its crew is taken care of.

Ben’s Cookies

The popular cookie business is exiting Singapore after seven years. It will close its Wisma Atria outlet on October 11, 2021.

This follows the closure of its outlet at Northpoint City on July 18, 2021.

The brand, established in 1983, is well known for its “world-famous cookies”. It sells freshly-baked cookies of over 20 varieties, including double chocolate and nuts.

After its Singapore exit, the nearest Ben’s Cookies outlets will be located in Bangkok.

Covid-19 impact frustrating and disappointing many F&B firms 

Eateries have been mostly impacted by the various Covid-19 safety measures – efforts put in place to curb the community spread of the virus.

The most recent measure – a two-person dining-in rule that lasts for a month starting September 27, 2021 – has caused a big stir of frustrations and disappointments within the F&B industry.

An eatery complained that revenue fell by 60 per cent the last time a two-person rule was implemented. Many operators also cited rent as a major pain point.

The government has stepped in to raise the Jobs Support Scheme level to 25 per cent from September 27th to October 24th.

It is also providing a two-week rental waiver for qualifying tenants on government-owned commercial properties.

Qualifying tenant-occupiers and owner-occupiers of privately-owned commercial properties will get a two-week rental relief cash payout under the Rental Support Scheme.

Featured Image Credit: Brands’ Facebook and Instagram screengrabs, Google Maps

Also Read: Covid-19: Dining-in limit scaled back to two persons from Sept 27 to Oct 24

Fully-vaccinated S’poreans can travel to South Korea without quarantine from Nov 15

From November 15, fully vaccinated individuals will be able to travel between Singapore and South Korea without quarantine.

This is another country that Singapore residents can opt to travel for leisure without quarantine, following Germany.

Singapore will open up a new Vaccinated Travel Lane (VTL) with South Korea to facilitate travel for vaccinated individuals, the Transport Ministry announced on Friday (Oct 8).

What can travellers look forward to

Under the VTLs, travellers who are fully vaccinated from Covid-19 will be able to travel between Changi Airport and Incheon International Airport and do Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) swab tests, in substitution of serving Stay-Home Notice or quarantine.

There will be no restrictions on the purpose of travel or the need for a controlled itinerary or sponsorship.

Singapore and the South Korea were each other’s top travel destinations pre-pandemic. There were 64 weekly passenger services connecting the two countries, carrying 1.6 million passengers annually.

More VTL schemes ahead

Under the VTL scheme, fully vaccinated travellers have to fly on designated VTL flights and take up to four Covid-19 PCR swab tests, including one pre-departure test and one on-arrival test.

More VTLs are likely to be set up soon, as Singapore looks to reopen its borders safely.

On Thursday (Oct 7), Trade and Industry Minister Gan Kim Yong said that Singapore is working on establishing a VTL with the United States and wants to conclude it as soon as possible, before the end of the year.

Featured Image Credit: Unsplash

Also Read: Rent, salaries, Covid-19 testing: How F&B bosses are coping with restrictions

22 is not too young for life insurance—making sense of the confusing myths and facts

[This is a sponsored article with Manulife Malaysia.]

When we’re young and spry, life insurance is probably far from our minds. Even if we do have an insurance plan, it’s most likely a plan chosen and paid for by our parents. That’s how it was for me until I turned 30 this year and decided to get an insurance plan for myself as I have more responsibilities now compared to when I was just 22.

In the event of my unfortunate passing, I know that I won’t burden my parents to pay through their noses for my mortgages and debts. Although life insurance is something that should be considered when you’re young, many fail to take the time to clarify the misunderstandings and myths that surround it.

In partnership with Manulife Malaysia, we will be addressing some common facts and misconceptions when it comes to getting your first life insurance plan. 

Myth #1: My net worth is so low, is it even worth getting insurance?

You might not have a long list of investments now in either stocks, properties or a huge amount of savings. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need life insurance. For most life insurance plans, it doesn’t matter if you have a high or low net worth, you should consider one if you have dependants (parents, spouse and children) to look after.

In the event of your passing, the lump sum payout from your death can be used by your dependants to handle their daily expenses or to pay off debts moving forward. 

That said, you should keep an eye out for the insured amount. Some insurance plans come with low premiums (monthly or annual payments that you pay to the insurer) and low insured amounts. So it’s important to know how much you’ll be insured for.

Myth #2: Life insurance is expensive because it includes add-ons that I don’t need.

There is actually a range of life insurance plans, even from the same insurer, to cater to different protection needs. Some come with multiple add-ons such as medical rider, critical illness rider, personal accident rider and so on in a single insurance plan. 

Note: In insurance, a rider means additional benefits included in the insurance plan.

However, if you’re just starting out, you might not require an insurance plan with multiple riders. There are standalone insurance plans that only insure your life in the event of your passing.

Myth #3: I should only consider Investment-linked Plans (ILPs).

Unlike standalone life insurance plans, Investment-linked Plans (ILPs) are life insurance plans with investment opportunities. With an ILP, you’ll be given the choice to budget your payments to be invested into funds.

ILPs’ perks are that it allows you to reap potential investment returns through investment-linked funds, but they do come with higher risks compared to standalone insurance plans, and their returns are not guaranteed. You can even withdraw money from it in case of an emergency. That said, they do usually come with a higher entry premium, compared to Manulife Easy Protect.

So if you’re looking for a simple standalone plan with no savings or investment elements, Manulife Easy Protect can be an option. Personally, I’ve signed up for an insurance plan that isn’t an ILP as I already have an investment strategy in place.

A word from the sponsor: If you’re considering a no-frills insurance plan, Manulife Easy Protect is a simple and easy to purchase life insurance with hassle-free enrolment as it requires no medical and financial underwriting. It offers high coverage for death and total and permanent disability at affordable premiums and it covers you until you’re 80 years old.

Myth #4: I’m still young and I don’t have any health issues, so I don’t need life insurance.

Even if you’re healthy, life insurance can be a safety net in case something does happen. And if you suddenly fall ill or become disabled, it might be too late to get one then.

When you’re healthy with no health conditions, getting life insurance can potentially net you a cheaper rate compared to rates you get when you are in bad health. Besides that, when you get life insurance when you are younger, you get a lower entry premium.

Myth #5: Life insurance benefits can only be claimed after I have passed away.

While regular life insurance would only pay out to your beneficiaries after you pass away, there are insurance plans that pay out a lump sum amount due to Total and Permanent Disability (TPD). For instance, if you get into an accident that renders you totally and permanently disabled, there are plans that cover exactly that.

There is also a life insurance plan such as Manulife Easy Protect that offers a guaranteed survival benefit. You will receive 50% of your annualised premium at the end of every 5 policy years.

Quick Maths: Assuming you’re a male aged 26 next birthday and you purchased the Manulife Easy Protect with a coverage of RM100,000. You will be paying RM61 per month or RM732 a year for your insurance plan.

At the end of the 5th policy year (age 30 next birthday) you will get RM366 via the guaranteed survival benefit.

Myth #6: I’m a stay-at-home parent without an income, thus I don’t need life insurance.

For those who are already married and with kids but don’t have an income (as a househusband or a housewife), life insurance can be vital. As the main homemaker, your role is usually to manage household affairs, such as taking care of the young ones, preparing meals or running errands.

In the unfortunate event of your passing, a life insurance payout may be of help to your family as it could contribute towards the costs of hiring someone to fill in your roles temporarily until they get a grasp on how to move forward.

A straightforward life insurance plan

If you’re just looking for a standalone term life insurance plan, you can consider Manulife Easy Protect. It comes with a hassle-free enrolment that doesn’t require medical and financial underwriting. The premiums can go as low as RM1.23 per day for coverage of RM100,000 for a female aged 25 next birthday.

It also comes with a guaranteed survival benefit of 50% of annualised premium payable at the end of every 5 policy years. You can get covered from RM50,000 to RM250,000 too, for up to 80 years old. 

In the event of an accidental death, your loved ones can get a payout of up to 300% on top of your life protection (additional 300% payout applicable to Accidental Death occurring outside of Malaysia or due to natural disaster).

• For more information on Manulife Easy Protect, click here.
• Manulife Easy Protect is only available exclusively for new customers.
• Manulife Easy Protect is only available until December 31, 2021.

Also Read: Laptop subscription services exist, but this M’sian company added on software and IT support

Featured Image Credit: Manulife Malaysia

After MyKuali’s success, this Penangite is championing more authentic M’sian instant noodles

Instant noodles have a very, very special place in my heart. I started with the typical childhood Maggi, then eventually graduated to enjoy more premium instant noodles like those from Samyang and Nongshim.

In the past, they used to be just a treat, even during university days. As a working adult, however, I find myself considering them to be a legit yet minimum-effort meal, especially on busier days.

They’re fast to make, are filling, and can taste really good if you’re buying from premium brands. Like with any other industry though, innovation is always just around the corner. It just takes the right brand to execute it well.

One brand that I feel has managed to nail the balance between premium instant noodles with affordable prices is KampongKu. To make matters better, they’re proudly Malaysian made.

A foodie’s journey

To understand KampongKu’s origins, one has to travel back in time. We interviewed Annie Tang, Executive Director of Tong Young Food Industries, the parent company of KampongKu, to learn more.

Annie grew up in a family of foodies, and after her father had to shut down his textile factory in 2010, they set up a small office in China.

They began exporting cooking pastes to China and tried to get listed in the supermarkets there.

“Unfortunately, having the products listed was not enough as we need a good marketing plan as well. We did not have the experience then, especially in a foreign land. After 6 months, we decided to cut our losses and return to Malaysia,” Annie recalled.

But their dream wasn’t over. In 2012, Annie, her brother Thomas, and their neighbour developed MyKuali Penang White Curry Noodles. According to Annie, it was the first of its kind in the market and took it by storm, and not just locally.

“The product was exported to Hong Kong within 6 months of launching in Malaysia, and was subsequently exported to at least 10 countries within the next 2 years,” she recalled.

5 years after MyKuali, Annie and her family decided to move on to something newer and bigger. Together, they started Tong Young Food Industries Sdn Bhd.

There, she handled exports, sales, operations, and R&D. Meanwhile, her mother would put her cooking skills to use and create homecooked formulations, which her father would then industrialise for mass production.

They partnered Yee Lee Trading Co. Sdn Bhd to create the Red Chef brand of 4 instant noodle flavours, and since beginning exports in 2018, Red Chef is now available in 7 countries.

But after 10 years of creating products for other brands, Annie felt it was time to create some to call her own.

Elevating the instant noodle game

To materialise her vision, she brought in her old friends, Kelvin and Vincent, who bring to the table a variety of F&B business experience themselves.

On August 15, 2021, KampongKu was launched with 4 cooking paste products and 3 instant noodle flavours inspired by local street food.

Looking at KampongKu’s website, there’s a lot of emphasis on its ability to bring the “real taste” of Malaysians’ favourite hometown food in instant noodle and paste forms.

How it accomplishes this is through chunky pastes. These pastes include real chunks of ingredients such as fried garlic bits, fried shallots, dried shrimps, crushed peanuts, and more, to preserve their flavours closely.

The team’s R&D process for making these pastes involves comparing themselves against store-bought fresh food to ensure that they’re close—if not better—in quality.

Each ingredient is studied to find out how it can contribute the best colour, texture, thickness, and coarseness to the paste in order to match the flavours KampongKu wants to achieve.

“For example, we maintain the fibres of the lemongrass in our grinding process for our Asam Laksa paste so that consumers get to enjoy the aroma from them,” Annie shared.

To add, the brand uses no added preservatives or food colouring in its products. However, with the right processes and packaging, their products can have a shelf life of 12-14 months.

Putting Penang in a package

As of now, these are KampongKu’s products:

If you’re a Penangite, it’s likely you’ll find that these flavours hit much closer to home, which makes sense as the state’s abundance of street food was what inspired the team (who are also locals) in the first place.

Having tried all the instant noodle flavours myself (but not yet the pastes, as I’m not much of a cook), I can say that what the packaging promises is what you’ll get.

The Garlic Black Pepper Fried Noodles came with a distinct garlic flavour, a promise that other brands I’ve tried in the past have failed to keep, and the Sarawakian black pepper used gave the dish a real spicy kick.

Meanwhile, the Mee Goreng Mamak was savoury and slightly nutty thanks to the peanut chunks in the paste, and it held a slight tang from tomato ketchup (a common addition to Penang’s version of the dish, we’re told).

The flavour that stood out the least to me was the Curry Seafood Fried Noodles, but I’m generally not a curry fan anyway. That being said, it still delivered.

A pack of 4 (whichever flavour) would cost you RM8.90, which is not cheap when compared to Maggi, for example. But you’d be hard pressed to find similar instant noodle flavours in the market, let alone at this price point.

Most online recipes require you to get your own ingredients and use common instant noodles as a base for modification, but that’s not what people who are after convenience want.

As for KampongKu’s cooking pastes (all 200g except for the Asam Laksa paste at 180g), they’ll cost RM5.50 each, which is an average price for most 200g cooking pastes already in the market.

Eyes on the global market

KampongKu was able to utilise Tong Young Food Industries’ existing machinery and facilities, thus there was no additional capital expenditure (CapEx) cost.

“However, our operating expenditures (OpEx) have increased a bit due to additional costs in the product development, launching, and marketing of the KampongKu brand,” Annie said.

The cost of raw materials is also what KampongKu has to contend with, since some of them have limited supply when they’re off-season, leading to higher prices. To overcome this, the team studies the trends of price fluctuations in raw materials and purchases them at low prices for storage during off-seasons.

All the experience that Annie and her team have from previous ventures will be beneficial in growing KampongKu, and the brand can also utilise Red Chef’s existing export markets when its products are ready to be shipped overseas.

Within the next year, KampongKu plans to have its products listed on supermarket shelves and in 3 other countries. Of course, the launch of a new range of products is also in the pipeline.

• You can learn more about KampongKu here.
• Read more F&B stories here.

Also Read: A spotlight on 3M’s under-sink water filter, built from their 80+ years of expertise

Featured Image Credit: KampongKu

With ShopeeFood M’sia launched, here’s the big-name food delivery app showdown of 2021

ShopeeFood has officially entered the space for food delivery apps in Malaysia, which is already saturated. Despite the many services out there, GrabFood and foodpanda appear to have the largest market shares of the food delivery scene locally.

Last year, airasia food attempted to capture a larger portion of the market by having Tony Fernandes personally deliver orders to customers between December 1 till Christmas. This year, it expanded with Teleport’s acquisition of Penang-based DeliverEat.

Thus, to see if ShopeeFood would even stand a chance against its competitors, we spent October 1 testing these 4 apps against each other. That was approximately 1 week after ShopeeFood officially launched in Malaysia.

To make the playing field as level as possible, we hunted for an outlet that all 4 apps listed. Ultimately, we were left with a very limited choice, which was Union Artisan Coffee @ 3 Damansara, which was a rough 2km away from our location in SS2, Petaling Jaya. Then we made our orders within minutes of each other.

This was to reduce external factors like bad traffic and weather that differ depending on the time of day. For this comparison, we’ll be taking into consideration the time taken to receive our order, user experience on the platform, cost differences, and the extra features offered for this experiment.

Note: This is not a sponsored article, and the services are arranged according to the order of our purchases. We also ordered different drinks on each app for some variety, but provide a comparison of the same drink’s price across the different apps for a standard reference.

GrabFood

Headquartered in Singapore, GrabFood was launched in 2018 and has since been one of the main players in the food delivery service scene. 

GrabFood is operational in 8 SEA countries. In Malaysia, it delivers in KL, Selangor, Kedah, Penang, Melaka, Johor, Pahang, Terengganu, Langkawi, Sabah, Sarawak.

Its delivery radius ranges between 7km-10km. You can pay with online methods or via GrabPay if you’re a frequent user, and cash on delivery (COD) is only available in several cities.

User experience (orders and payment): As I’m already a frequent user of GrabFood and GrabPay, the ordering and payment process was swift since all my details are already registered. New users would ultimately go through a similar process since you’ll be required to sign up for an account.

Price: I paid a total of RM11.43 for my Piccolo Latte whereby the coffee itself cost RM9.43 (inclusive of RM0.53 tax) while the delivery fee was RM2.

Time taken for order to arrive: 32 minutes. We placed our coffee order at 1.45PM, and our hot Piccolo arrived at 2.17PM, still warm.

Overall thoughts: A rather swift, yet expected experience when ordering on GrabFood. The delivery duration of 32 minutes was average for the service, though I was surprised at how low the delivery fee turned out to be as it can go much higher depending on several factors.

Here’s how I’d rate GrabFood:

foodpanda

Expanded to Malaysia in 2012, foodpanda is a Berlin founded company that’s operational in over 40 countries worldwide. In fact, it’s actually the first food delivery app to launch here. 

Locally, foodpanda is available in KL, Selangor, Johor, Melaka, Penang, Pahang, Kedah, Terengganu, Kelantan, Negeri Sembilan, Sabah, and Sarawak.

The app is able to deliver orders from merchants within 5km of your delivery address and accepts COD in addition to the regular online methods.

User experience (orders and payment): The ordering process was rather smooth for us as well. We had little trouble with the intuitive UI (similar to Grab’s), and payment was made without a hitch.

Price: The total for a Piccolo Latte on foodpanda was RM13.60. The coffee cost RM8.90, the delivery fee RM3.99, while there was an additional service tax of RM0.77.

Time taken for order to arrive: 19 minutes. We managed to place the order at 1.47PM, and it arrived at 2.06PM. The iced latte we ordered came with its ice still intact, albeit with a little leakage that wasn’t really the rider’s fault.

foodpanda has definitely stepped up its game from the last time one of our colleagues reviewed it back in 2019, where he reported that it took the service 1.5 hours to deliver his food for what should’ve been at most a 45-minute process.

Overall thoughts: For a service that’s been in the food delivery scene for 9 years now, the user experience is unsurprisingly smooth, just like GrabFood. However, foodpanda has the smallest delivery radius in each area compared to the 3 other apps reviewed here. 

This could be a strategic move on foodpanda’s part, as a smaller delivery radius may be able to ensure rider availability by keeping them saturated within a small area. My colleague, who lives in a more suburban town with fewer restaurant choices, has also stated that foodpanda has been the most reliable food delivery option for her.

Thus, foodpanda takes the win for the fastest delivery time.

My ratings for foodpanda:

airasia food

airasia food was launched in May 2020 as a response to its grounded flights during the first MCO. Supported by AirAsia’s logistics arm, Teleport, it first made its debut in the Klang Valley and has since expanded to Ipoh, Johor, and Melaka.

Although the service originally provided a delivery radius of up to 60km, it currently only lists restaurants that fall within 15km of my final delivery address. The COD payment method is not offered.

User experience (orders and payment): airasia food probably had one of the worst user interfaces for its ordering page. We wanted to order a caramel iced latte, but instead of having the usual drop-down menu to choose your flavour, we had to type out this preference as a note, which is a step that can be easily missed by users.

Unlike the other apps, airasia food oddly didn’t allow for immediate deliveries and prompted us to choose a scheduled delivery time. Which means, if you wanted to order your food at 1.55PM, you’d have to choose the most immediate time slot which is 2.30PM. However, this may differ from area to area, as my previous experience with the app wasn’t like this.

To add, the payment process was very slow as there were long buffer times in between the switching of pages on the app. My colleague’s app froze upon paying for her order, so I gave it a shot but experienced the same.

We waited a couple of minutes to try again, and the second time was the charm. After placing our order and making the payment though, we had to wait for the restaurant to confirm our order. This probably took 10 minutes and was a weird experience because we were just left in limbo for a while, not knowing if our order would actually come or not.

Price: The bill for a Piccolo Latte would’ve cost RM10.44, where the drink was RM9.45 while the delivery fee was RM0.99.

Time taken for order to arrive: 52 minutes. Our iced caramel latte order that got through was placed at 2PM and only arrived at 2.52PM. Its ice was intact and the drink suffered no leakages.

Overall thoughts: Perhaps the delivery time slots are meant to manage customers’ expectations when receiving their items. There was also some confusion from our rider asking to confirm our delivery address, implying that airasia food’s location tagging and address input was inefficient.

To add, the rider also had to confirm our order to ensure he picked up the right one. We weren’t sure if it was because airasia food’s ordering system was also inefficient, or it was because we had forgotten to specify “caramel” in the notes of our order due to repeated tries.

Just like their flights, airasia food brands itself as being a more affordable option in the market. And based on the price comparison, they do have the cheapest rates, giving them the point for having the best price.

Here’s how we’d rate airasia food:

ShopeeFood

The new kid in town, ShopeeFood was made available in Malaysia on September 24 this year. Headquartered under SEA Group in Singapore, ShopeeFood is currently available in Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia (with rumours that Singapore will be included too).

In Malaysia, ShopeeFood is only available in the Klang Valley for now. Though its official delivery radius is not known, my app only shows me merchants within 6km. Unlike on the other apps, self pickups are not available.

User experience (orders and payment): The ordering and payment process was as smooth as GrabFood’s for the same reason: I’m already a frequent user of ShopeePay and its e-commerce platform.

Price: The Piccolo Latte’s total price was RM13.40 with tax included. The drink itself was RM9.40 while the delivery fee was RM4 (no vouchers were available).

Time taken for order to arrive: Here’s the twist: it never did. We tried ordering twice, and both attempts got rejected as it couldn’t find us a rider, just like my pre-launch attempts. 

I gave it another try the next day but switched merchants as I’d lost all hope in getting my coffee via ShopeeFood after 4 further failed attempts (was it just the location of the store?). I placed an order at 5.12PM for an avocado milkshake from a location that was 4km away from my residence.

It was delivered to me 14 minutes later at 5.26PM, which was actually the fastest recorded time compared to the others, even with an extended delivery distance.

Overall thoughts: With the number of cancellations we faced when trying out ShopeeFood, the service’s only redeeming factor for us was its prompt refunds supplied via ShopeePay. 

However, for those without the app’s e-wallet enabled, it can be said that the service might just be pigeonholing users into using it. While beneficial for existing users, it’s a hindrance to new ones.

As for its inability to find us riders in a reliable manner, we’d pose this question to Shopee Malaysia: why launch the food delivery service if it’s not of a scale to fully meet demands?

This experience proved an immediate failure on ShopeeFood’s part to capture users early on. If it can’t reliably match riders to users and is adamant about forcing its e-wallet onto them, there would be few incentives for people to try it again and again. 

With stronger and more dependable food delivery services already in the market, the only way we can see ShopeeFood being a competitor is if they offer lower food or delivery prices, or offer irresistible promos that aren’t just ShopeePay-exclusive.

Our ratings for ShopeeFood:

-//- 

Tying up all the ratings above, here’s how they each fare:

In the end, the winners that came out on top were still GrabFood and foodpanda. Perhaps there’s a good reason why they command so much market share here.

Despite ShopeeFood’s fastest delivery time (ultimately) and airasia food’s more affordable prices, the main players still won us over for their dependability, consistent delivery, and overall good user experience. They’re the undisputed champions, and using either foodpanda or GrabFood is very much down to one’s personal preferences.

PS: to the Union Artisan Coffee branch in 3 Damansara, thank you for the 3 solid cups of coffee we got that day. It’s what kept us going throughout this stressful experience managing the logistics of this experiment.

• You can read more articles we’ve written about food deliveries here.

Also Read: Laptop subscription services exist, but this M’sian company added on software and IT support

Featured Image Credit: ShopeeFood Malaysia / GrabFood Malaysia / airasia food / foodpanda Malaysia

Is NFT a modern art movement, seriously?

Great art often has humble beginnings.

Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) is widely regarded as a father of modern abstract art, but he wasn’t always a hit with the greatest ever in Western history and the most expensive in the world — north of US$200 million!  

Now, hold on to that thought for a second.

20 years from now, art critics who trashed non-fungible tokens (NFT) will look back and declare them as the defining point of 21^st century art. They will have a complete change of mind, or ‘critical revaluation’ to be polite.

Tate will hold a full-scale retrospective exhibition for the creator of EtherRocks, who remains anonymous. CryptoPunks will be inducted into the Smithsonian as ‘national treasure’. The computer code behind Bored Apes will evolve into AI life form and receive the Congressional Gold Medal. The medal, you guessed it, is an NFT.

NFT art, if we have to generalise, is neither abstract nor humble. NFTs are loud and kitsch. They already fetch record prices at Sotheby’s and Christie’s.

They can represent anything or everything — from the most basic visual building block, a single grey pixel (last sold for US$1.4 million), to an entire digital metaverse in multimedia, 3D and augmented reality (AR) formats.

The most intuitive comparison of NFT art is to that of Andy Warhol (1928-1987) because it is so decidedly ‘commercial’ (which is not a nice thing to say to an artist back then).

This is the guy who painted popular everyday objects like Campbell’s soup cans and Coke bottles and famously elevated them to high art. He reproduced and iterated head shot photographs like those of Marilyn Monroe, Michael Jackson and even Mao Zedong with colourful and playful elements – like what we see with the current profile picture (PFP) trend in NFT. 

Warhol combined mass industrial technology (silkscreen) with classic art techniques, raising eyebrows at the time. He didn’t bother producing some of his own art that bears his name, and he didn’t care.

Today, many NFT works are digitally generated by computers. The top creators are more likely to be companies with ‘Labs’ in their name or individuals who rather stay pseudonymous like ‘Pak’. Truly, the medium is the message in NFT art.

Originality is overrated – and this was the central idea to Warhol.

One of the biggest critiques of NFT is that it is so mass reproducible. Replicas and knockoffs are everywhere. The ownership of an NFT is not copyright, there is no legal title, and anyone could freely duplicate a JPEG file on the Internet – so what’s the point?

To Warhol, the more counterfeit copies (of his Marilyns) are out there, the more valuable the real one becomes – and provenance is the one thing NFT does better than all other art forms.

In a 1964 interview, Warhol was criticised by the press for not being original: “You have just copied a common item. Why have you bothered to do that, why not create something new?” To which he replied: “Because it is easier to do!”

But there is a darker side to this than we let on.

The crypto community has always been tribal in nature. And this shows in the way they interact with art. It is not just about being memesy like donning laser eyes, riding Lamborghinis, or using lingo like HODL and REKT.

‘Conspicuous consumption’ seems like a virtue – the nouveau riche shows off their newfound crypto wealth. Gone are the days where rich art collectors hide their precious stash to prevent theft: Art would disappear from public view; bids are discrete and undisclosed.

Now, NFT buyers openly tweet about it and brag about how much they paid. They display it on their avatars like a status symbol. If you’re not keeping up, well, HFSP (have fun staying poor)!

Perhaps, this aligns with Warhol’s concept of mass celebrity where everyone has their 15 minutes of fame. It speaks beyond this, however.

To the crypto community, to be decentralised is to be atomised, isolated and faceless. But ‘alone together’, they are a global tribe, and this tribe needs a carrying card, an identity; which can explain why sushi and spaghetti are not food, but DeFi protocols. Dog coins are never about dogs, but a dogma that gets you into silly fights. Everyone has an inner Feels Guy. And all hail Elon the village moon god.

With NFT art, it opened the door to individuate. It is not just about personal celebrity. If you spend enough time on it, you may find it totally Absurd, Surreal, and Performative – which incidentally are traits of modern art movements.

The NFT community is self-aware, but don’t take themselves seriously. You can’t tell if it’s a cult or a circus and those in it can’t either.

For the love of Warhol, where will NFT art go from here?

As a sign of its own confidence, it is increasingly paying homage to the modern art forefathers: Salvador Dali’s lobster has been NFTed by DJ Paul Oakenfold. Piet Mondrian’s plastics can be personalised as a cool GIF and minted into NFT. Warhol’s banana in an NFT pack was sold at Christie’s for US$3.3 million. The list goes on.

May greatness come upon those who copy shamelessly!

The author is the co-founder of Celebrus Advisory and official appointee of the Tech Expert Network by Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC).  

For more crypto updates and news to make sense of crypto and blockchain technology, you can visit our sister site chaindebrief and follow its Telegram channel here.

Featured Image Credit: Crypto Art Culture

Also Read: What I learnt about laundering with NFTs