Story and photos by Sean Yoong
For die-hard fans of seafood, the best way to secure the freshest fish, crabs and prawns might be to trudge through a wet market and haggle with the hawkers early in the morning. But what if seafood could be delivered directly from the fisheries to your doorstep?
That’s the premise of My Seafood Mart, which is part of a new generation of F&B businesses that are dispatching top-quality produce and meals to their customers’ homes. These gourmet delivery services believe the public’s thirst for convenience is now matched by a hunger for nutritious food that transcends burgers and pizzas.
“Most of our customers are repeat customers, and we stock up their freezers for their weekly seafood consumption,” says Benny Tan, who co-founded My Seafood Mart last November.
Tan’s online retail enterprise makes between 30 and 40 deliveries weekly, selling local seafood such as dragon tiger groupers, flower crabs and cuttlefish to households and eateries. Demand has risen through word of mouth and publicity through Facebook and flyers, he says.
Many of the Klang Valley’s new delivery services are run by small teams who’ve been reluctant to open physical stores because of higher costs and difficulties in managing stock.
My Seafood Mart comprises a total of three partners and three employees who divide duties such as overseeing a fishery in Pulau Ketam, responding to orders and packing seafood in styrofoam boxes for delivery within eight hours.
Tan says that keeping costs low is their most formidable task. “When we first started out, we had a few customers ordering only one fish each. The cost to deliver their order from Pulau Ketam to their homes was already more than the value of the fish,” he says. My Seafood Mart has since introduced a minimum order of RM100 to cover delivery expenses.
On a smaller scale, there are businesses such as Steak And Bread (pic) which operates in a house in Subang Jaya. Its two founders – chef Kua Jinhao and logistics executive Ronnie Lee – prepare gourmet sandwiches and make at least 15 lunch deliveries daily around Subang (as well as an erratic number of dinner deliveries), with plans to expand to Petaling Jaya.
“Our customers are usually office people who are too busy to go out for lunch,” says Kua, who returned to Malaysia after training at Sydney’s Le Cordon Bleu and working at fine-dining restaurants in Singapore for four years.
Kua’s specialities include beef steak and chicken sandwiches that showcase meat prepared using the ‘sous-vide’ slow-cooking method used by upmarket restaurants to enhance tenderness. Made with Italian-style ciabatta bread, meat sandwiches cost between RM12.90 and RM19.90. Kua says he’s been able to minimise costs since launching in July because there’s no need to rent a business venue.
“The main challenge is to cook and deliver the food in time to all our customers in a 45-minute time frame” after receiving each order with only one motor-cycle, Kua says.
Some businesses thrive on specific niches. Delicious Detox Delivery (DDD – pic) founded by Austrian expatriate Carina Lipold and German Elke Wollschon, both health coaches, began delivering meals that emphasise organic raw food last November.
“We noticed that many people want to eat healthy, but they simply don’t know how and don’t have the time. Therefore we wanted to provide the solution, to empower people to become and stay healthy,” says Lipold. “Convenience is also a need of everyone nowadays, especially in KL with this traffic and often limited food choices around the workplace.”
DDD’s two chefs Azeb and Matthew start work early, preparing lunches such as veggie burgers and raw pizzas made with a dehydrated base of nuts and seeds, topped with spreadable cashew ‘cheese’ and marinated vegetables. Another team member, Rizal, sends the meals to customers by noon; food must be pre-ordered, helping prevent wastage.
Meals can comprise a main course (RM25), dessert (RM10) and a smoothie (RM15). Lipold says customers often recommend the service to others by testifying that they lose weight and feel and look better, even reporting improved health check-up results.
Most of DDD’s customers comprise women between 25 and 55 years old. The business kicked off with a high percentage of expatriates but now has a customer base that’s more than 70% Malaysian, Lipold says, adding that it broke even after only three months.