 |
| chap cai peng style |
This was my lunch that day, and despite my plate looking not very Instagram-worthy, it actually was quite pleasant a meal. Sufficiently meant to fill the stomach, they'd catered in these huge trays of fried rice, chicken filets, fish filets, siew mais, chicken curry, steamed vegetables and party bites. There was orange squash. There was black tea and coffee with sugar sticks and creamer packets. And there was hot dessert to finish.
The queues were long, people stood in line and moved round the buffet table as they filled their plates. The colleague returned armed with two platefuls of food. He'd simply embraced the whole thing with a fun spirit and let the chap cai peng spirit in him take over.
Which was the true spirit in everyone at this place in MBFC.
 |
| F&B |
To be Singaporean is to understand what chap cai peng is all about. It's a distinctly Singaporean thing for us to make it an every day meal where we pile rice on our plates and then add a bit of this and a bit of that and squeeze in as many varieties as possible onto a single plate and have it at a value-for-money price. We're practical and efficient in that sense. And it's the same vibe at the nasi padang stall. Queue, point, point, point, pay, and go.
That same practicality and efficiency applied in day to day choices were probably the driving message behind the technological disruptions displayed at this event. There were systems to facilitate customers' ordering processes. There were systems that streamlined your supply reordering processes and placed checks on quantities and supplier-restaurant relationships. There were systems that brought e-commerce trade to the forefront and created new opportunities for new connections with new manufacturers and suppliers.
A whole bunch of us squeezed into one of the conference rooms and stood around for presentations and panel discussions on branding and digital marketing and social media marketing and influencer marketing and advertising and creating a website and getting it top spot on a Google search.
There were several conversations with the exhibitors, including one that had garnered recent publicity for their gigantic vending machines at MRT stations where you could order a hot dish of pasta to-go for $3.50. Then there were the overheard comments which signified the current temperature of the local F&B climate.
Still, if there's one thing that unites the whole climate, whether you're a fresh grad, whether you're into fusion or traditional or desserts or confectionaries or cakes or Mediterranean, it's that we're all about the Kopitiam, and the organizers know it too.
 |
| a pretty kopitiam chair |