The Rise of Home-Based Businesses!
Home-based businesses are on the rise. It's a matter of convenience for some to earn more from their homestead, and perhaps for a few good reasons, home-based businesses are here to stay.
For one, home-based businesses are perfect for people who are uninterested in the traditional route of opening a business, which requires many hidden costs. With recent years and global events affecting our sunny shores, times are tough. Prices are high, especially for electricity, ingredients, and most of all, rentals. Chef Rishi Naleendra, chef owner of Cloudstreet, had, in 2020, explained that “paying rent in Singapore" was, in his blunt way, "one of the most ridiculous things in the world". Perhaps this is one of the reasons more people are willing to take more risks in running their business.
More young entrepreneurs, with that little spark in their eyes and full business plans clutched in their hands, are taking the chance to operate a business out of their homes without having to invest more than they should in a business. Schools, like At-Sunrice GlobalChef Academy, is letting the students run their own business within school grounds under the mentorship of their teachers. Nicknamed The Living Labs by the staff, the online take-away business is one of the ways the school is incorporating practical skills and real world knowledge for students to cultivate, where the students assist the Chef-Instructors in the food preparation process using the cook-chill technology and prepared in their kitchens. The Living Labs is just one of a few activities the school is doing in order to push their students forward in learning practical skills. This programme is a combination of industry experience and studying at the same time. Under this job training, students get assigned different activities, like events, take-out businesses, and others. From there, they get to learn how to use such ingredients, how to check the quality of the food item and how to sell these items. This can be done even in the comfort of their homes, and school programmes such as the one from At-Sunrice GlobalChef Academy help educate the students on the food product so that they can better understand and market the product online, in an e-commerce retail site, which they can run from their own homes and also develop their own marketing strategy and branding.
It is perhaps things like this that help to make home-based businesses more of the norm and give people a much more flexible opening to open a business. Enterprising members, in the form of running private fine dining establishments, are doing so from their own homes. From the experience, they are then able to build up a customer base and perfect recipes, which then leads to them investing more time and money to open up a proper storefront for a restaurant. Chez Kai, for example, is one such establishment. The Franco-Chinois restaurant offered beautifully made menu items with Chinese and French influences, and co-owners Yeo Kai Siang and Ang Zi Yi had for two years operated out of their kitchens, hosting and feeding hungry diners who came back time and again for the delightful ambiance, the great food, and the hosting capabilities of the couple. Today, emboldened by their success, the couple, along with a dynamic and youthful team, has opened a restaurant front in Geylang. Using the experience they've had in the last two years, they've managed to channel and fine-tune their menu offerings to something that people would love, and it's become a hit amongst returning diners and new customers alike.
No longer is the traditional brick and mortar storefront the norm in Singapore. Now, with more businesses being home based, more virtual brands, operated from out of their own homes or via cloud kitchens, are lending themselves legitimacy. Provided, of course, that the businesses are conducted in safe, legal ways (i.e. certification for safe handling of food, licensing for home-based businesses etc), home-based businesses are on the rise, and we should support the passion and the people who are doing them so that they are able to build on their brand awareness and their skills. It's, after all, a matter of time before more businesses go down this way.
