Devin Otto Kimble is the founder and managing director of the Singapore-based MENU Pte. Ltd. Food & Drinks Group, which owns and operates Brewerkz Restaurants & Microbreweries, Cafe Iguana, Garage and MENU Catering.
Formerly, Devin was the regional operations manager for Dan Ryan's Chicago Grill, which is headquartered in Hong Kong and has outlets in Singapore and Taipei, and a multi-unit manager and corporate recruiter with Taco Bell in Connecticut, USA. A graduate of Yale University, Devin also holds a master's degree from Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration.
He is a member of the Restaurant Association of Singapore Management Committee, on the Board of Governors for the Singapore American School, the world's largest overseas America-curriculum school, a member of the Hwa Chong International School Board of Trustees and president of the Yale Club of Singapore.
He has been a speaker and panel participant on various business and hospitality-related topics at the Singapore-based University of Chicago Booth Graduate School of Business, the Cornell- Nanyang Institute of Hospitality Management, the UNLV Harrah College of Hotel Administration, the Singapore American School and INSEAD where he has also been chief judge for the annual business plan competition. He formerly served on the American Chamber of Commerce in Singapore's Board of Governors and was its honorary treasurer and an executive committee member.
Company:
MENU PTE LTD
Address:
30 Merchant Road, #01-05/06 Riverside Point, Singapore 058282
Originally called Brewerkz Singapore Pte Ltd in 1996, Menu Pte Ltd has grown from being a single concept to an well-rounded restaurant operation that currently includes unique concept restaurants such as Brewerkz Restaurant & Microbrewery with its menu of American-style favorites and a range of 12 beers brewed on-site, Cafe Iguana, a Mexican cantina that has great food, 150 tequilas and mezcals, and WineGarage, which features a unique seasonal menu and an award-winning wine list with over 600 labels. Menu Pte Ltd has been a highly successful restaurant group which serves 1,500 customers every day, 7 days a week. Menu's business innovation and excellent quality of service have won her numerous accolades such as Asia Beer Awards 2008, Australian International Beer Award 2007 and Singapore's Best Restaurants 2007. With the success of existing establishments, Menu intends to forge ahead with creating more outlets from these business models, and has strategies in place to continue experimenting with new ideas and concepts.
Interviewer's Comments:
Mr Devin Kimble struck me as a passionate entrepreneur who has fully embraced life through a an amazing range of entrepreneurial experiences. I particularly admire his liberal attitude towards trying things and accepting failure. His down-to-earth demeanor makes it all the more a pleasure to chat with him. I am also sincerely inspired by his business acumen and the carefulness with which he runs his business. I find it remarkable that Mr Kimble pointed out that entrepreneurs need to be risk averse. I am confident that under Mr Kimble's leadership, MENU will continue to thrive in the Asian F&B industry.
1. What is the nature of your business?
We are a Food & Beverage company. Fundamentally we are a restaurant company although we generally use alcohol to attract people so we have a brewery, the Brewerkz and one of the world is best selections of Tequilas at Cafe Iguana, with about 350 wines on the wine list. We are also a western style restaurant and we want to focus in Asia. That is one of the things that makes us unique. We are able to run western concepts in an Asian context.
2. When and why did you decide to become an entrepreneur / take over your family business? NOTE: If it is not a family business, ask: Do your parents have their own businesses too? Have they inspired you in one way or another? (Select appropriate question according to the entrepreneur being interviewed.)
When I was six, I looked into the bookshelf and asked my mother if I can have some of the books. She said "yes" and I proceeded to take them down and put them into my little red wagon and sell them door-to-door throughout the neighbourhood. I guess entrepreneurship to a certain extent was part of my make-up. My grandmother was one of the first women to pass a series of stock brokerage exams and she ran a stock brokerage in New Mexico. My grandfather was a life insurance salesman. My father is a minister but you would be surprised at how close being a minister of churches is to being a small businessperson. My mother runs a pathology laboratory that she set up on her own. I would guess that I come from a group of entrepreneurs or a family of entrepreneurs. I did not set up to be an entrepreneur. I never thought I would be an entrepreneur. When I was in university and I was a smart kid and [it was expected that] you gonna get a job: be a banker, be a lawyer. But even through university I was always doing things that were entrepreneurial like ran a store of stereos. We were one of the biggest retailers of 90 minute cassette tapes in the state of Connecticut. The college students could come to buy on bursary accounts at Yale so their parents basically paid for them. We sold thousands and thousands of these cassette tapes along with speakers and amplifiers. [So back in Yale you were already a successful businessperson?] I was an entrepreneur of some sort. With friends of mine, we came up with a bunch of ideas. After Yale we had one. We developed an insulated cover for beer kegs used in parties and it was branded. We had it manufactured in Korea and we sold them to beer distributors so it was a branded product. Another thing I did was that I tried to start a coffee company importing coffee from Indonesia and this was before Starbucks and before the coffee craze really hit. I wanted to use the Indonesian style of coffee making. I presented it to a friend of mine in New York and we presented it in a fancy gourmet show in San Francisco. We got all kinds of feedback from people on whether they accept this, whether they like this and whether they are interested. Ultimately we could not raise enough money so that idea fell apart. I ended up getting a job in New York. I then went to Cornell to get my Master in Hotel Administration. Between semesters at Cornell, I went to Cambodia and I opened a bar with some friends of mine in 1992. I graduated in 1993 and I worked in Telco Bell for a bit over a year and I came to Asia. I have been running Brewerkz for 14 years.
3. What are your reasons for choosing to do business in this particular industry?
When I was working in New York, as someone who washed dishes tables and waited tables, Id did not see F&B as glamorous. Whereas in New York, things started to change and restaurants were becoming more and more interesting. I started to take cooking classes. I started to take wine appreciation courses. Also with a friend of mine, we promoted big New Year is Eve parties of about 250 people. We rent a hall and bring in cases of Champaign and have a DJ. I felt that I really like it, opening bottles of Champaign for people and having a great time. It was a lot of fun and I liked cooking. I always cooked. I did not think I would do it [starting a F&B business] until after I have worked in the corporate world where you are in an office staring at the computer screen for 14-16 hours a day. I really like the hands-on experience of cooking and taking good care of people. It is just a lot more interesting. F&B is something you can be entrepreneurial with, something that you can have your own ideas. In F&B, I can be creative and the competition is not that high. You see a lot of places that are very standard; they are very similar to one another. If I do something that is slightly different and I run it better, I can make some money doing this that is a lot of fun. I think I have the best job in the world, running a brewery on a tropical island. It is fantastic.
4. How did you put together all the resources needed to start your business? For example: getting the start-up capital, hiring staff, doing sales and marketing, advertising, etc.
Having worked on Wall Street myself, we had a very good sense of what investors are looking for. We went through a whole bunch of ideas. We thought the microbrewery idea was something big enough and was interesting to private equity investors. We put a nice presentation together and we pitched it to a bunch of venture capital people. We had lined up a couple big firms. One was a Singapore firm and one was an international VC. Right at the last minute, the international firm froze the fund because their principal who was interested left the company, so we had to go back out to the marketplace again and raise the money all over. 40% of the money was friends and family. We raised money from ABR and also raised about 20% of the capital from an Indonesian investor.
We started from scratch. This was a blank building with cement floors. We had an architect and 5 brewers who we gave equity to inject the brewery. We just took the money down and started building the place. We got it open in about 10 weeks. The building was only 6 months old when we opened the restaurant. [why did you choose this spot?] It was inexpensive. It was relatively close to B-class site. It is big enough for us to put a brewery into. When you do a brewery, you need enough seats to amortize that brewery. Otherwise it is not an efficient thing to sit on your floor space. And we knew this area is close to CBD and it is going to change with MRT and all those wonderful things. It turned out to be very nice location for us.
We started with a fantastic chef from New York, a famous celebrity chef there. The food was fantastic . We got great reviews from The Straits Times and Business Times. But nobody wanted the food. What they were looking for was comfort food. They were looking for burgers, pizzas and things like that so we had to revamp the whole concept. We had to turn it into a western place.
[how did you assemble this group of amazing talents?] We went to talk to them and convince them that we have a vision that this is a niche that is underserved in Singapore and we knew the American food side of things could be popular. The BrewPub concept was something that was really starting to take off in the United States, having a brewer inside a restaurant.
5. Why did you choose Singapore as the location of your business?
There are a couple of reasons. I started out in Asia. In 1994 I was in Hong Kong and I was sent out to Singapore. Looking at Singapore, it offers a wonderful mix of people with different cultural backgrounds. If you take Hong Kong for an example, it is primarily Chinese and it is primarily Cantonese, as opposed to the mix of Chinese that is in Singapore. Like Hong Kong, there is a strong expatriate population: Japanese, Koreans, Americans, Australians and Brits. It gives a wide view of our customer bases throughout South East Asia. It [Singapore] is a good crossroad for Asia. We can, for instance, look at how Koreans react to our products and we know whether we could probably do well in Seoul. There are about 30,000 Koreans working and living in Singapore and we see Korean customers on a pretty regular basis. In Singapore, that allows us to get a view of how our concepts will do in other places. We have definitely been set up so that we can grow out of Singapore. The other thing about Singapore is that it has an English rule of law and English is the language of the country. So it makes it quite easy to do business here. There is only a single layer of government and it is a clean government. The rules are pretty well established. We felt as Westerners when we began, Singapore would be the place to do it.
6. What are some of the challenges you faced when you first went into business?
It was very difficult in the beginning because the Singapore authorities have never seen anything like what we have done, such a big western restaurant, and such a big open area. When we opened, the haze was so bad that we could not see across the river. Business was awful at that time. Another thing was that we had an issue with the fire certificate. They let us open but we had to cover all of the cold rooms with some sort of special fireproof covering. It was weird. We also could not get a license to play recorded music so we hired a DJ to change radio channels. He changed channels so you would not hear the commercials. So it was really an awful situation.
7. How did you overcome these challenges? Please share some specific examples of the action you took to overcome the challenges.
We struggled for the first three months. After that we were pretty much break-even for 6 months. Then we started to become cash-flow positive. I think the ability to look at what was working and what was not working was the thing that finally started to make a successful business. At the beginning we thought the beer would sell itself. There is such a demand for good beer in Singapore that we do not even need to say anything about the beer. Consequently what happened was we tried to focus on selling the food because the beer would sell itself. That was a big mistake. Since then we really learned we need to focus on the beer because that is what makes us unique; a lot of other places have the food.
The other thing is that we really needed to adjust our concept, from the type of food and the items we were serving, to have a much broader appeal. Probably because we worked in finance, the idea we had was that we could do something that is a little bit more elevated, when in fact Singapore was very middle-class, kind of middle of the road, particularly for the expatriates. Whereas Hong Kong , for instance, is heavily finance-related, Singapore tends to be heavily oil and gas-related for the expatriates from places like Mobil and Shell. They are not that kind of big spenders that finance people are.
[Has that changed over time?] Yes, I think it has changed. Also, the locals have started to embrace the concept a lot. We are probably 50% Singaporeans at this point and we were 80% expatriates initially. A lot more Singaporeans travel. They have got abroad. They study abroad. They have a much broader view of the world now.
8. Can you remember your worst day in business or a time when you felt like giving up? What happened that made you feel that way and how did you triumph over it?
I think the worst day initially was right after the New Year in the first year. We had tried to do something different. We decided to give the service charge to our staff so they were making really good money because we felt that was the right thing to do. We thought we would get better people if we did that. The worst week of the year was always the week after New Year in Singapore. Business was just absolutely terrible. We had the haze and we had the currency crisis happening at the same time. I had to fire people and cut salaries back. I got them in a room and told them things were really difficult. We got to the point where during the Chinese New Year my pregnant wife and I were working in the restaurant because we let all the staff go home to see their families. My partner, Daniel, was also working behind the bar. That was a tough time. We had terrible board meetings. We thought the shareholders would kick us out. They doubted we got the concept right. Day to day we looked at our bank balance to see whether we could make it to the next week. We did not know whether we were going to survive or not.
[If business was that bad, what made you believe you could overcome these challenges?] we were flexible. You spend your whole life solving problems. You look at it and say "well, this is not working. Let us do something else." That is really what we did. We figured it out. We have a nice place and good concepts. We started doing things like free beer with lunch. Monday through Friday, it was free beer. Another thing we did was dollar draft. We did it 5 to 6 on Monday and we filled the place out. Once we figured it out that we needed to push the beer and started doing things like that, we started to be very successful.
9. Can you share some of the lessons you learnt from overcoming your own business challenges that you think will help other businesses?
You can do a lot of market research. You can think about your product a lot. But until you actually start to execute, until you actually open the doors and have customers, it is very difficult to know which ways things are gonna go. I think you have to get open and adjust.
The other thing is that I came to realize that running a restaurant is not just about the idea. There are a lot of other things in your relationships with the board of directors, your accountants, your bankers and your attorneys. All these people are very important to making your business successful. You also need to have good HR practices and financial controls. If you do not, you will not be able to execute on your idea even through it is a good idea. An idea is like a ticket to the dance. It does not guarantee you will find a girl to dance with. You have to be able to dance.
10. When was the moment you realised the business would work and support you?
We struggled until we won a Gold Medal at the World Beer Cup. We won in a very hard category to win in and that really put us on the map. When we won that medal, the economy was turning up and we came out of SARS and we were on a good business cycle. All of a sudden, sales shot up 15-20%. Cafe Iguana turned around and we started to make all those money.
11. What are some of your proudest business achievements to date? And why are they so important and meaningful to you?
In 2008, I was able to achieve financial goals set by the major investor and I was awarded 20% of the company. That made my very happy because I satisfied investors and got paid back. This is fantastic. I could not have got here without investors.
12. How do you differentiate your business from your competitors? Please provide specific examples.
We have quite a few other BrewPubs now. There are seven people making beer in Singapore now. What we offer is a broad diversity of beers. The quality of our food service is very good. We have a very American style of menu which is very ecumenical and eclectic; within the American menu you can borrow from the world. We have niche locations, into the stadium and set up by the river. They are very attractive places. We also have a name. We are the old guy having been here for 13 years. That serves us very well. Cafe Iguana has diverse types of Tequilas and offers good prices nobody else has because we buy Tequilas directly. Wine Garage has a phenomenal wine list and a great bar.
13. What are some business ideas you have implemented that created great results in your business?
We have always done five-day workweek. We have never done split shifts. I think that helps us with our human resource management. People are really important. People do not get paid a lot in the F&B industry so it is fundamental that you treat them well. I think we are a market leader in treating our employees well. Consequently we do not see a lot of turnover. We have 20 people who have been here for 10 years and 10 people from the pioneer batch of staff who came right in the beginning. Another thing we do in treating our employees well is that once they are made captains, they get a manager meal so they are able to bring their families and friends to have a beer and a meal together. We have health insurance for all the employees. We really strive to take care of people who work for us.
The pricing of our beers is very interesting. We have 4 timed changes for price levels so we obtain 3 opportunities to promote our beers to customers at tables before a price change. Contact with the table is important to being able to sell more beer.
We handcraft practically everything we sell, the beer, the food, the deserts and so on.
14. Where or who do you get your business ideas from?
I read a lot. I try to be engaged in the industry; I am on the management committee of the restaurant association of Singapore. I go to a lot other restaurants and I travel and see what other people are doing in the world. I read a lot of industry publications. I read a lot of academic publications. I think it is very important to get out and see what other people are doing and adapt to the situation. The other thing is looking at the way customers react to your product. We consider our employees as customers. They are our internal customers. Each turnover costs us a few thousand dollars so it makes sense for us to talk to them about what they want.
15. How much have your business grown since you have started? In terms of $ revenue, customers base, number of employees and number of branches? (rate of growth in percentage or numbers)
What do you see for your business in the next 2 to 5 years amid the current market condition in 2009, and does it include any plans for expansion?
Our turnover has grown from $7 million to $20-25 million. We now have six restaurants: 3 Brewerkzs, 2 Cafe Iguanas and Wine Garage, and a catering service. Over the last 3 years we built 4 restaurants and a brewery. In 2007 we changed our company name to MENU to reflect the diversity of our concepts. As Cafe Iguana got more successful and the Garage added a new concept, my feeling was that we were not just Brewerkz. We have multiplied our concepts. It was a tough change because Brewerkz is such a known name. But ultimately we are going to do more concepts.
There are a few other concepts I would like to try in Singapore. I would rather launch new concepts in Singapore and prove them here. Hopefully about this time next year, we will be opening in Hong Kong. I think Hong Kong is a better place to take a look into China. It has an English legal system as Singapore does. I view China with a bit of trepidation right now. I feel there is real estate bubble going on right now. Some of their business practices are not refined enough for a relatively small company like us to succeed, if we do not play the correct rules. That bothers me to a certain extent so I back off. I think it is much easier for us to take a look into China once we get established in Hong Kong. It is going to take effort and new ways of doing things. Probably in next 5-10 years, you will see us growing overseas. [Do you want to go IPO eventually?] It will be nice to be listed. It gives the owners more flexibility.
16. What does entrepreneurship mean to you?
Entrepreneurship is taking an idea and making a business out of it. By that I actually mean making it work. You may not have the most original ideas but being able to take a plan and turn it into a business is what entrepreneurship is to me.
17. What are some entrepreneurship qualities that you have which has helped you come this far?
I think you need have a certain amount of risk aversion. You cannot be a gambler. I think gamblers tend to take their money and invest it with hope. I like to invest my time and money based on a careful assessment of the situation. Entrepreneurship is to look at the market, look at who you are and what you are able to do, and assess that well and have the discipline to make it work. You have to be risk averse. You cannot do go out and do anything.
18. In your opinion, what other qualities does a person need in order to be successful in business? And why? (eg. Educational qualification, work experience, family influence, attitude, etc)
I never really thought myself as an entrepreneur. I was a very good student. I worked very hard. I think being disciplined and being hardworking are definitely helpful in term of making something successful. I was a swimmer for a long time, doing 4-5 hours of practice every day. I think all this kind of things are helpful. You cannot just have ideas. It is a lot of work.
You have to have some creativity. You have to want to tinker with things. You cannot expect to do it one-time and it will be perfect and stay perfect forever. There must be continual improvement. You need to constantly adjust things and apply positive pressure to your business. I am constantly pushing to make things better; otherwise they will turn around and be not as good.
19. What have you gained from this experience of starting your own business, apart from monetary rewards?
I did not necessarily do this for the monetary reward. The money is nice. It was the challenge, the ability to make decisions and to be creative that matter. It has been incredibly fulfilling to do what I do. It is fantastic to have ideas and put them into place and see whether they are successful. I have the real luxury now of having a track record. That is hardest thing when just started out. Now I have built a business and it is relatively substantial. This is something I am very proud of.
20. Who or what motivates and inspires you?
I think it is just the thrill of a challenge. I like seeing things work. I like to tinker with things until I get them to work. Things are never perfect but the closer you get to perfection the more satisfying it is.
21. What are some of your business values and what would you like to pass down to others, particularly the younger generation? Do you have any advice for young people who want to start their own businesses?
You cannot know the future. So many people young tend to follow a certain path that they believe will lead them in a certain direction. I think you need to embrace the randomness and chaos of life. Particularly, in the Asian cultures, there has been so much chaos through history that parents want their children to follow a certain path. It is like stay on a certain path and you will be successful. I think you have to be able to let go if you want to follow your creativity and you have to prepare to fail because the only way you get good at anything is to practise it. When you start doing something, you are not good at it. That is the nature of anything that is challenging. If you want to be an entrepreneur, you need to be an entrepreneur. You cannot stand on the sidelines and watch other people be entrepreneurs. The way to be an entrepreneur is to practise being one. You will fail and you need to be able to accept that.
22. Do you have any vision for MENU?
I would like to see 50-100 outlets before I rest in my grave. I want to see a large independent restaurant chain in Asia. I do not have a lot of interest in operating in the western world. In the western world I am just another Caucasian. There are plenty of people like me in Chicago and Sydney, whereas in Singapore, my background and experience give me a competitive advantage. [Do you personally like Asia?] I do like a lot of places in Asia. Singapore is a wonderful place to live in right now.
23. Do you have any advice for young people who do not know where they are going?
Do not be afraid of looking around. Do not afraid of trying things. You do not know what you are good at or what you like until you try. I think you need to embrace the whole range of opportunities. You need to embrace life.
24. What have you gained from this experience of starting your own business, apart from monetary rewards?
I did not necessarily do this for the monetary reward. The money is nice. It was the challenge, the ability to make decisions and to be creative that matter. It has been incredibly fulfilling to do what I do. It is fantastic to have ideas and put them into place and see whether they are successful. I have the real luxury now of having a track record. That is hardest thing when just started out. Now I have built a business and it is relatively substantial. This is something I am very proud of.
