IT'S not a great day to be out driving. Rainclouds looming up ahead doesn't bode well for me.
As my car rolls to a stop in front of the Cookhouse in Petaling Jaya, the clouds finally give way to a torrential rain and winds that threaten to pull my umbrella out of my grip.
Walking into the open loading bay, I make my way into the building, my dripping umbrella clutched in my hand.
A smiling stocky-built woman is waiting for me in the reception area. "I'm Su San," she says, her hand extended in welcome, while someone else discreetly removes my wet umbrella from my grip.
"Terrible weather," she remarks sympathetically, before beckoning me further into the small walkway.
"I wanted to give you a tour of the place first, but let's sit down to talk here," she continues, smiling happily.
It's quieter and away from the noisy downpour outside, she adds, flinging open the door.
Leading me into a theatre-like setting, I find myself imagining that I'm walking into the set of my favourite cookshow, MasterChef.
The 16-station set up with individual induction stoves, bathed in spotlights and tasteful orange deco is the proverbial rabbit from her magic hat of tricks.
One, she tells me regretfully, that was pulled out a little too soon for this interview. "This was supposed to be the highlight of our tour!" she says half-exasperatedly. "I wanted to leave this area to the very end for the wow factor!"
I'm duly wowed indeed. The area is sleek and promises to be the perfect setting for a cooking demonstration, classes or even team-building events — if you and your colleagues want to bond over cooking, whisking and knife skills.
"There's potential for a lot of activities," she agrees, grinning.
She should know about that. After all, recognising potential is Huen Su San's "superpower".
The enterprising 36-year-old has been dallying in a host of businesses, including event spaces and Korean dining, from the time she graduated with a business management degree. The Cookhouse is the entrepreneur's latest venture.
Touted as a "Cloud Kitchen", Cookhouse spans 10,000 square feet of shared spaces, offering 24/7 access to culinary mavens and aspiring chefs who no longer want to endure inadequate home kitchens, with fully equipped, industrial-grade kitchens, storage facilities and other services for entrepreneurs thriving on food delivery.
CLOUD KITCHEN
Cloud kitchens (also called virtual kitchens, ghost kitchens) are spaces that serve delivery-only concepts or restaurants.
There are no storefronts and no dining areas; if there's space to wait for food, it's usually reserved for the food delivery folks driving your meal around.
The idea is that companies who want to grow their user-base or meet the demand for delivery don't have to open more restaurants to do so; they just need to find more kitchen space.
Today the commissary concept lies at the heart of the cloud kitchen trend, helping entrepreneurs cut labour costs and rent real estate in an unassuming building rather than an expensive stretch with heavy foot traffic.
Diners these days appear less and less concerned about their familiarity with restaurants themselves and more, it seems, about the quality of the food delivered to the comfort of their home or office.
Cloud kitchens capitalise on the shift in customer behaviour towards online ordering while reducing the costs associated with traditional brick-and-mortar restaurants.
Since ghost kitchens are fully focused on the delivery aspect of a restaurant, you can optimise many other aspects.
Streamline the kitchen, create unique workflows that support digital ordering, invest in insulated packaging to reduce delivery frictions, and customise your menu items to be delivery-friendly.
The most obvious benefit of a shared kitchen space is the cost savings it provides.
Residents will not have to deal with a high monthly rent for their own dedicated space or high capital outlay for renovation and kitchen equipment.
Residents, points out Su San, can take full advantage of Cookhouse amenities and facilities through affordable packages, customised to fit their needs and requirements.
Furthermore, concerns on heavy spending for top-of-the-line kitchen equipment which may be under-utilised can also be forgotten as Cookhouse is fully stocked with equipment, saving small-scale chefs the trouble of buying new appliances or major kitchen equipment in their shared kitchen space.
The space also allows flexibility for residents to bring their own tools and rent additional freezers as well as storage if required.
The idea of Cookhouse, shares Su San, was birthed when she was growing her food and beverage business.
Her venture into food started in 2015. Riding on the Korean wave that was sweeping this nation — thanks to Korean dramas and the ubiquitous K-Pop music — Su San brought in Hanbing Korean Dessert Cafe, Korea's top BBQ restaurant Shinmapo Korean BBQ, and modern fusion Korean BBQ Apple Samgyupsal.
She also created and launched Seoulnami Korean BBQ in Malaysia.
Running eight outlets, she soon recognised the need for a centralised kitchen.
"I had two central kitchens catering for halal and non-halal cuisine," she shares, adding bluntly: "I'd invested heavily on building these central kitchens to support our outlets so that we'd have the capacity for further growth."
They cost a lot of money, she admits with a wry chuckle. The idea of a cloud kitchen came to her when co-working spaces became a big thing in Malaysia about a year ago.
"The whole sharing economy was growing back then," she notes, adding that the "aha" moment about opening a cloud kitchen — a relatively alien concept here in this country — arrived several months ago.
By the time the pandemic hit the country, Cookhouse was almost 95 per cent ready.
With the onset of the Movement Control Order, work stopped abruptly. It did affect her food business, she admits. But setting up the Cookhouse opened up a host of possibilities, with a growing demand for food deliveries while restaurants were shuttered.
Being in a group chat with several F&B owners, the discussion of using a cloud kitchen became the topic of their conversation.
"It was the perfect moment for me to tell them that I'd already set up Cookhouse here in Malaysia and it was open for business!" she confides, chuckling heartily.
A NOSE FOR BUSINESS
Su San has a knack for recognising business potential and putting her finger right on the pulse of a business opportunity.
"I've always loved the whole idea of being in business," she confesses readily.
Her father, a retired contractor and mother, a remisier, are no strangers to the business world, she adds with a laugh.
The eldest of two girls, Su San openly tells me that she loved science back in school but the lure of being in business led her to take on additional subjects like Accounting and Art.
"I was a bit of a nerd!" she confesses. "The idea back then was that if you're smart, you'd go into Science stream. That's what I did," she recalls, adding: "But my interest was very diverse!"
From a young age, she was intrigued with business. "One part was of course making money, but most importantly, I loved the idea of creating something valuable out of nothing or bringing different components together that other people would value," she muses.
After finishing her SPM, she immediately went on to pursue a business degree in Singapore.
Most people would wonder why she didn't take on the traditional path of going into engineering or medicine, and many did comment on her choice, she tells me wryly.
"I just loved business!" she says, shrugging her shoulders.
Was this your father's influence? I ask. "Not really. He likes the fact that I like business but he'd have preferred that I studied to be an accountant instead," she replies, grinning, telling me blithely that she found the idea of being an accountant "boring!"
Besides business, the Ipoh-born entrepreneur shares that property development is her "true love".
Your father's influence must have rubbed off on you, I insist. "Perhaps!" she concedes. "After all, thanks to him, I saw buildings a lot differently from most people. I love architecture, interior design and all that. My first ambition, in fact, was to be a property developer."
Her first job after graduating was in property real-estate. While most of her university mates chose banking as their career, Su San went on to become a marketeer of "office buildings".
Looking at my reaction, she laughs, explaining: "That's how much I liked buildings!"
After a year of working in Singapore, she was summoned back to Ipoh. "My parents were getting old and wanted me to be closer to home," she says, sighing.
Seeing the flooring grinding machines from her father's finished projects, she recognised the value of bringing in cement flooring technology to Malaysia.
Seeing first-hand the cracks that were caused by cement finishing carried out here in Malaysia, she realised that bringing in the right technology might make perfect business sense.
"Cement cracks were not the cause of poor workmanship. It's because we didn't have the technology to prevent these things from happening. Normal cement will crack, which was why cement flooring wasn't a popular choice for most homeowners."
She did a lot of research and found out that there were such things called "modified" cement that couldn't be found in Malaysia.
"Modified cements had other elements added to the cement so it wouldn't crack," explains Su San.
She adds: "Cement floors were not really in and trendy yet but overseas they were a big thing. This was around 12 to 13 years ago."
That opportunity led the-then 25-year-old to set up her first two business ventures in the property and construction industry, namely Polished Concrete and Designer Finish.
BIG OPPORTUNITIES
From property to flooring, it's not often you find a young woman with a passion for what's pretty much a male-dominated industry.
"My father always told me not to get involved in construction. Girls don't go into construction, he said to me," she confides, laughing.
Today, he's pretty happy with her decision to go into business. A contractor for more than 30 years for government projects, the retiree and his wife prefer to play a supporting role these days in their daughter's ventures.
Her nose for sniffing out potential opportunities is as keen as ever.
"I like property, travel, food and business," she reels them off one by one, adding: "So I'm in all of these now, all mashed together!"
There are always opportunities coming and going, she tells me, but there are moments when you get attracted to an opportunity you genuinely have a passion for.
When the opportunity for an F&B business came along, she just took a leap and went into it.
Since then, her business empire has continued to grow as she dabbles into various sectors, including recreation industry (LaserOPS — laser tag arenas set up in Singapore and Penang), hospitality industry (Hotel Inap and Glasshouse at Seputeh) as well as venturing into the F&B industry with Korean dining outlets.
"The ability to build thriving businesses in different industries that I'm passionate about is something I'm most proud of," she explains.
With the launch of Cookhouse, Su San is set on trailblazing a new path again.
At the tail end of the interview, she takes me on a tour of the 10,000 square feet shared cloud kitchen space.
Cookhouse comes well-equipped with five private kitchen studios, a shared baking production, Asian & Western kitchens, prep kitchen, walk-in freezers and chillers, dry storage, packing facility, loading area and food delivery pick-up stations for easy distribution.
"It's an opportunity to bring together food entrepreneurs and create an incubator and community for them. They don't need to invest heavily in building a kitchen when they can use this space and focus on their food quality," she explains.
There are already people who have rented the space.
As we walk through the gleaming kitchen, the delicious aroma of something cooking on the stove wafts through the air. Beaming, the entrepreneur tells me that there are already plans for expansion.
She's far-sighted enough to realise that there are opportunities arising everywhere, despite the dark clouds of the pandemic hovering in the horizons.
"You just need to grab hold of what excites you and make that leap!" she concludes with a smile.
Cookhouse
Where: 3A, 1, Jalan PJS 3, Taman Medan, Petaling Jaya, Selangor
For details, go to www.cookhouse.com.my.