GEORGE TOWN, Feb 8 — They are from completely different backgrounds — one is a web developer and another does sales and administration — and they are not chefs.
Yet, Neoh Yee Ling, 27, and Jennifer Cheah, 34, decided to venture into a whole new field they are both not familiar with — the food industry.
It took them half a year to plan, research and work out how they could take a spark of an idea from a third business partner, Sim, and turn it into a working business plan.
10 things about: Cheah and Neoh of the Boxed Up Chef
In middle of January this year, the Boxed Up Chef officially started and since it is relatively new, many potential customers assumed it was a food delivery service.
The Boxed Up Chef offers boxes of carefully weighed and measured packed ingredients along with a recipe card for a meal for two, four or six.
They cut out the hassle of shopping for the ingredients and measuring out the spices and condiments for any recipe.
Here, they share the Boxed Up Chef story and journey.
In their own words:
Cheah: Nowadays, the lifestyle of the working adult is too hectic so it’s become too much hassle to even buy groceries. So, we are doing this to create the atmosphere of home and to tell people that it is very simple to cook at home.
Neoh: People thought we were selling pre-cooked meals but we are not. We have received a lot of feedback from people thinking we are delivering cooked food. So, we are also trying to educate Penang people about pre-packed meals that they can easily cook at home as we also provide recipe cards with step-by-step instructions to follow.
Cheah: All our recipes are very fast because we are encouraging people to cook at home instead of eating out. When you eat out, you never know what they use in the food, the grade of the salt used, the oil or the amount of sugar they put in. We want to educate people, to show them that home cooking is not that bad, it’s not that difficult at all. I can say that because I’m a person who doesn’t cook at all. I’ve no idea how to cook. I’m not from the food and beverage business. I’m from manufacturing so this is totally new. Now I learnt that cooking is not so bad after all. I’m not a good cook, but at least I’m cooking.
Neoh: Yes, by doing this, you actually know what you are putting in your food and you can control your salt and sugar. You know what you are eating and putting into your body. I do cook. Actually, when Sim came to me, it was to ask me help with the website, as we know developing websites is not cheap. So he sought my help and roped me in as a partner. As things progressed, I started to take more interest in the business. I started going into product development. I don’t deal with the suppliers as Cheah does that but I do more on the marketing and packaging side.
Cheah: Because we are not from an F&B background, we did a lot of research for six months before we started. This concept is not new overseas, different countries have different concepts so we are trying to localise it so that the local market can accept the idea. Next we learned about packaging, we learned about the lifespan of vegetables, everything about food. We learned how to minimise everything, how to make it simple, so anyone can cook a meal within 45 minutes. We really want to encourage people to cook, working people like me to whom cooking is not a priority. Our recipes, we go for healthier options like brown rice or quinoa. We just got a supplier for fresh ramen, so it’s not preserved and doesn’t have boric acid.
Neoh: We will hack the recipes together and we will come up with something simple. We want to make sure the customer can go from zero to kitchen hero in 45 minutes. We are not just promoting Western food. We are trying to bring local cuisine back. Food that your mother cooks…like sweet and sour chicken, assam curry, chicken curry. When we think about chicken curry, the idea is that it’s very hard, you have to find the curry powder, the ingredients, the spice…etc. So, what if we pack everything for you, the blended spices and all you need to do is follow the recipe in every box.
Cheah: “It took a long while to convince my mum that I wanted to do this. She’d ask me, “Are you sure? Penangites can just go out and buy char koay teow.” But now that she understands the whole process, she agreed to it. This idea came from Sim. He was talking to us about it. We thought it’s something new. So, we did our own research. I’m in manufacturing, she’s (Neoh) in web developing and he (Sim) is an accountant. Three of us, coming from different working backgrounds and different schedules, somehow found time to plan it, got feedback and worked it out before we launched it.
Neoh: We all have one thing in common. We met at TedEx Weld Quay. I sought Jennifer’s help for social media marketing and Sim was one of our volunteers. We got this idea last year in June. I was in web posting engineering, after that I joined an entrepreneurship project in a co-working space. One of the events at the space was a pitching event where people pitched to potential investors so Sim pitched this idea. But that time, he was just alone. Then he told me about it and I brought Cheah in and then, we all looked at how we can do this.
Cheah: Our name… a lot of people have suggested we change it. Many don’t like it and an investor even suggested we change it to icooklah.com but we refused to. We like our name. It will take a while to educate Penangites and get them to be receptive to our concept. For now, the take-up is still quite slow. We started this here in Penang instead of Kuala Lumpur, like our juice partners Smooshie Juice, because when we were planning it, we still had our day jobs here and all of us live here.
lNeoh: I came up with the name. I boxed up the chef! We just want people to become kitchen heroes in the simplest way. It’s okay to start in Penang because if you can make it in Penang, you can make it anywhere else. In the future, we are definitely looking at expanding to KL and other places. We are also looking into developing recipes for children and special health requirements like diabetics.
