We have been lucky to meet very very nice customers. One fine day we were distributing flyers to a couple in the park, and the couple brought the whole family along for dinner. Subsequently we have visits from the parents of this couple every week. They were from Taiwan, the land of friendly people! We got to know the parents name, Louis and Joy after a few visits from them. 

In one of the visits, Louis mentioned to include longan into our bestseller brownies. He said it was a hit in Taiwan, and there is a shop selling Longan Cakes (Longan Muffins actually) and the locals there loved it. Louis and Joy were so nice until they provided us with one box premium dried longans from Taiwan for experimentation.

After giving us the dried longan, a few days later they came with the famous longan muffin brought from Taiwan. They had a colleague that went Taiwan for a job and asked the colleague to bring back boxes of the famous longan muffin from Taiwan. They gave the muffin to us for sampling and reserved the packaging box for us for reference. 

We are really grateful to Louis and Joy. Probably seeing us as newbies at the business world, both of them would want to help us to survive the competition here. We started from scratch, experimenting so many batches of longan muffins and eating so many of them. It's like an examination, and Louis and Joy are the examiners. We finally passed their taste test after many attempts in making the Longan Cake. Louis said if we were to succeed, he would buy 50 boxes of longan muffins.

And we passed the packaging test too.... They loved the box. We were under the impression that these longan muffins is bought by Louis for their mooncake festival gift giving. But only today we knew that he was buying from us to help us promote our cafe and helping us to find a competitive advantage. We were loss for words. We have been receiving a lot of help from them. It is so nice to know that there are such angels out there........

All thanks to our dear friend that gave us this idea to bundle the brownies in boxes for parties and events. She has been in the business world for quite some time, and has given us constructive recommendation to sell our delicious homemade brownies.

So now we package the brownies into boxes so that those who loved our brownies and who would like to share with friends and family would get to enjoy them outside the comforts of our homely shop! To keep prices low, we have given the brownie box little decoration. In the process of deciding on how to present our brownies in boxes, we have struggled between cost and presentation. Should we make it nicer and charge for the box or should be let the prices be low and make it affordable? 

Well we decided to make it affordable. Priced at $10 per box and simply designed, we want to let everyone get to enjoy the brownies at an affordable cost. We do know that packaging is important but fancy boxes cost a bomb. At last we let the brownies do the talking themselves.

We have a Taiwanese family come visit our shop on a beautiful Sunday evening (too bad we did not take pictures with them. We should!). We were in the midst of preparing 2 orders of brownie boxes for my dear friend. One box is ready when the family came in and therefore they witness the birth of our 1st box of brownie box! We explained to them we were making these boxes and apologize for initial disorganized dining table that was set to wrap the brownie box.

The family had ordered 2 brownies to try and were happy with it. So the 1st box of brownies going to my dear friend became theirs instead! We are happy that they loved the brownies! Come again!

Today marks the 11th day of operation. Many things has changed. From menu, operations, and decoration of the shop. We have seen repeat customers in our second week! Really grateful for having them here. This week's sales is still low, due to the low visibility and awareness created on the shop. We have changed the menu by adding more and eliminating some items. As we are still learning and adapting, flyers went from version 1 to version 3 printed black and white and distributed by ourselves. It is tiring, but it is a real life marketing challenge! As the menu is still subject to change, we have not gone to the mass flyer printing. So far, we have placed an order for 2 banners to hang out. That is our only mode of advertisement for now.

So today, a beautiful Saturday morning, with lots of joggers around the park (but not in front of my shop!) I embarked on a thick skinned journey:

No banner, no flyer at hand. So armed with this hand drawn sign, and a colour printed menu, I went out of the shop, walks round the park, asked people to look at the menu, and directed them to my shop. Not a lot of people is around. I approached a group of 3 young guys and they were very receptive to my short speech of my shop. After them, I walked around and talked to 3 aunties who wonders whether my hand drawn sign is a new advertising gimmick for the younger generation. One of them ask: Now advertising is done like this ah? Effective meh? What can I say? My banner and flyers are not ready, and this is the only thing I could do for now (super thick skin

Well when I reach the shop after my round, the 3 young guys were already in the shop! Many thanks to for trying the place and the food out! We gave them a free home made brownie. To promote a shop, one must really reach out and talk to people. Young people are the ones that are more willing to try to come in the shop. From observation, the older ones sees me(smiling sweetly and holding flyers) like a disease. All avoided eye contact and quickly scurried away. 

We asked the 3 young guys on the food. They said breakfast was nice especially the mushroom! Happy:) Hope they will come visit again!

Lift upgrading works has completed. Here's a look of view outside seen from the inside of the shop.

We have also decorated the walls with wall stickers.

In the course of decorating our shop, we stumbled upon a marker called "liquid chalk" available at Daiso. It is good to write on any smooth surfaces such as the fridge, glossy cabinets and glass materials. It is easily removable by wet cloth. We had a good time decorating the bare windows of ours and we had some help from friendly Damai Secondary School students. Here's the artwork:

We have visits from fellow entrepreneurs. Many came in although the shop is empty. Empty shops normally scares people but they came in and gave words of encouragement, and improvement suggestion. Many thanks to them! Neighbours were very supportive too! Nice neighbourhood we have here!

We open on a quiet Tuesday. It was quite rush as we only got the license on friday and we rushed to open 4 days after the license is issued. 

We prepared the food and the food are nice! however due to low visibility and low human traffic, the 1st day sale is a tiny 2 customers! This shows the importance of advertising! The lift upgrading works has yet to be taken down. Here's how the food that we prepared look like.

The sauces (except cheese sauce) are made from scratch. We found a good supplier for sausages and ham and it tastes wonderful. Chicken meatballs are made from scratch. Well since we only have 2 customers that day, all these food has gone to waste. Wastage high! We met a lady, who ran a cafe before and she shared her experience with us on how to better improve on the cafe, and what should be done to reduce food wastage. Therefore the next day, we changed the method to prepare food. Many thanks to her! 

Friends and family came over to show support. Many thanks to them! 

We welcome constructive feedback and is still in the progress of change. Motto: change till we are satisfied! 

On the very first day we receive the keys to our shop, we met our future neighbor. The unit we rented was previously taken up by only one tenant and therefore there are doorways connecting both sides of our shop. The future neighbor accidentally damaged my tiled flooring. Alas… I have a spoiled floor! This means more $$!!!  Here’s the extent of the damage.

My future neighbor decided not to rent the shop next door anymore and denied any responsibility towards the floor he damaged. We were left to bear the cost of renovating the flooring ourselves at $2,700. An unexpected expense!

Here’s the transformation images… 

In the course of saving cost, we made our own signboard using the knowledge we gained during secondary school days. Look at it! 

It’s all handmade. I’ve been wondering where we got such skills! We did the painting of the walls, the scraping of the walls, buying furniture from ikea and assemble it ourselves and design the whole shop.

Finding a place to position Secret Hideout is not easy. We've been looking through CommercialGuru, making calls everyday to the agents. Went to check out the places that could be rented. And we end up here.

Check this place out! There are birdwatchers around. It seemed like bird enthusiasts come here with the birds in cages, sit down, relax and enjoy the chirping of the birds. Gentle breezes can be felt. 

The downside is.... where are all the people at? Quiet and tranquility is not a normal phenomenon that businesses would like. But we like! The first look at our shop is like this

Yep, the life upgrading works is blocking the wonderful view of the reservoir from the shop. All that we could see is "Danger, Keep Out!" Sign. Guess we have to bear with it for now!