KUALA LUMPUR, March 12 — Do what you love. Chase your passion. That, ostensibly, is what some business gurus offer as advice to would-be entrepreneurs. Others, such as billionaire Mark Cuban, warn that what you love may not be what you will be great at.
The truth may lie somewhere in between: Begin with your passion but be prepared for a lot of hard work to make it a success.
This is the lesson Georgina Fernandez and John Peter, the husband-and-wife team behind Five & Two Fine Foods, touted as “perhaps the only food company world-wide to produce an Asian bacon range” strongly believes in.
When the duo started making bacon jams six years ago, they did not possess the requisite knowledge such as food preservation.
Georgina recalls, “We failed many times at our attempt to get the formula just right to offer a decent shelf life to customers, with zero preservatives added in. We contended with burst and whistling jars, foaming contents, mould and fungus, but we kept learning and experimenting.”
This meant entire batches of products had to be thrown out, which in turn meant a lot of lost revenue.
John says, “It was painful to see so much go into the bin in the name of R&D but it had to be done. Today, we can proudly offer our customers top notch, preservative-free products with a shelf life of at least six months.”
The reality is that starting a business out of your passion is easy. Growing it is a lot more challenging.
Scaling a business doesn’t always mean expanding the existing team, however. Georgina says, “Size-wise, we’re still the same — just the two of us. John and I still manage the entire business ourselves. We still operate from our home commercial kitchen.”
What has expanded is Five & Two Fine Foods’ product range: besides their signature bacon jam range, they also provide full-fledged catering branded as Daily Dinners and Party Food.
John says, “Our catering arm commenced in 2016. It helped diversify our offerings in delicious new ways. There are months when the sales of bottled products dip, especially immediately after festive seasons. Our Daily Dinners and Party Food help pick up the slack during those times.”
Now that the business has a fresh food element, logistics is another challenge for the pair to tackle.
While the couple share the duties on food production and recipe development, they now work with third party companies to handle pick up and delivery.
In addition to these aspects of their business, they have settled into different roles outside the kitchen that capitalise on their individual strengths. John manages the finances whereas Georgina handles all of their advertising, marketing, corporate identity and packaging designs.
While their offerings are more diversified now, Five & Two Fine Foods remains most recognisable for their bacon products: from a couple of Bacon Jam flavours, they now have 12 Bacon Jam flavours, six Asian Bacon flavours and six flavours of Candied Bacon Stix. Clearly their unique selling proposition is their wide variety of bacon products, focusing on the Asian palate.
As bacon is typically considered a very Western product, Five & Two Fine Foods has infused it with Asian ingredients; popular products include the Bacon Sambal and the newly introduced Naughty Bacon.
John describes the process of developing their Bacon Sambal recipe: “Being Malaysians, sambal is in our blood. After a few rounds of tweaks to the levels of spiciness (to make it acceptable for the general public) and sweetness (with traditional gula Melaka), we had on our hands a winner. To date, it remains our top seller and we have probably sold about 5,000 jars to date.”
As for their Naughty Bacon, a well-received 2019 Chinese New Year special (over 100 jars have been sold in the past couple of months), Georgina explains it was part of their continuous R&D efforts. She says, “So when we came across a traditional recipe for Burmese balachaung, we thought that it would be ‘da bomb’ of flavours with bacon infused into it. The combination of fried onions, garlic, ginger, red chillies, turmeric and bacon sounded so right, that we just needed to give it a go.”
Georgina and John are set on conquering markets outside of Malaysia next; they have big ambitions for their bacon products in countries such as China, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Australia. Like the best entrepreneurs, these two are not content to rest on their laurels. There are always more things to do, new mountains to scale.
Do what you love. Chase your passion. But be prepared for lots of sweat and sacrifices. If the success of Five & Two Fine Foods thus far is anything to go by, their hard work and faith in their business have paid off handsomely.
To learn more about Five & Two Fine Foods, visit www.fivetwofoods.com
