Zac Chua, Founder and CEO of The Kettle Gourmet, knew that he wanted to start a business since he was very young. Though it was only much later that he decided to run a food business. Growing up in a nurturing environment with open-minded parents, it seems like he was always destined to walk the path less travelled.
We spoke to Zac (over MS Teams given the current pandemic) to understand more about his popcorn story, and how far he has come in growing his own empire within the span of a few years amidst the pandemic.
Entrepreneurship Starts From the Mind
If the path to entrepreneurship is like trekking a mountain, then Zac would be that person who has been training all his life to scale the peak. Unlike his peers who are brought up more traditionally, he was encouraged to pursue his passion since young. Living under the roof of his Venture Capitalist father, he was exposed to having the mindset of an entrepreneur. Without realising it, he was learning to be an entrepreneur by simply seeing, hearing and experiencing how his father ran his business, his work ethics and words of wisdom – which made a lasting impact on his own bearings as a business owner.
Already certain about his entrepreneurship path, Zac enrolled in the Business Management program at Singapore Management University (SMU). Besides picking up skills he would require as a business owner – accounting, business strategy and economic principles – he also went on an exchange program to other parts of the world like United States, Australia and Belgium. From meeting other entrepreneurs, to observing business pitches at Starbucks, the overseas experiences fully immersed him in a bustling startup culture – a equally pivotal learning for him as an aspiring entrepreneur.
The Inspiration Behind The Popcorn Story
While Zac did not have a concrete business idea at the start, jumping onto the hype of tech startups – notorious for rapid cash burn – was not a route he wanted to go down. As a first-time entrepreneur, he felt building a cash-based business was more practical and sustainable. The foodie in him led him to start a food business, specifically popcorn that is an all-time favorite snack.
Not knowing anything about the F&B industry, he adopted a trial-and-error approach in building his business. He would experiment with different spices and ran taste tests repeatedly in his own kitchen to develop new popcorn flavors. For marketing, he would “stick to the basics” by attending networking events and distribute name cards to promote his popcorn. With a simple landing page set up, he would compile the orders manually with an excel sheet.
This continued until he had another eureka moment of infusing local flavors into the popcorn while catching a movie at the cinema one day. He then started to collaborate with flavoring houses to devise uniquely Singapore flavors such as Kaya Butter, Nasi Lemak, and Chili Crab.
Read Also: 5 Questions With…Regine Sum, Founder And Creative Director Of Nasty Cookie
Overcoming the 3P Challenges (People, Product, Process)
Like all business owners, there were sacrifices that Zac has made to grow his company. Over the years, he hardly has any time for social activities, though the sliver lining is that he has also made new friends in the entrepreneur community. “Entrepreneurship is a lonely journey, but you will naturally meet people who relate to your journey.”
Looking back on his journey thus far, he categorises the challenges he faced into the 3Ps: People, Product, and Process. Among the three, he acknowledges that “people” proved to be the hardest one for him as a leader. This does not apply to only getting the right hires and retaining them, which is an increasingly difficult task with today’s generation. It also took him quite a while to find the right supplier and distributors to work with – having switched several times.
From an initial one-man show to leading a team of 21 people (11 in Singapore and 10 in Malaysia), his approach towards hiring is straightforward. More than qualifications, he looks for potential candidates who share a genuine passion and love for the products, ask insightful questions and display common sense.
As he puts it, F&B is an “easy to start, easy to fail” business. Brands that are unable to keep up with changing customer preferences will become obsolete.
Knowing that customers are more health-conscious these days, The Kettle Gourmet prides itself on using high-quality natural ingredients that are trans fats-free, non-GMO, and less sweetened with no artificial flavorings.
Faced with the constant pressure to introduce new flavors, he has partnered with flavoring houses to ramp up R&D efforts and adopt a more efficient method of experimenting with flavors in powdered form. By making use of in-house sales data and distributors’ reordering rates, he is able to make decisions fast and replace flavors that perform poorly. With such rigorous innovation, The Kettle Gourmet is the only popcorn brand in Singapore to carry unique local flavors.
Achieving The Impossible: Thriving in Trying Times
Starting The Kettle Gourmet with a purely digital approach turned out to be one of his best decisions. Compared to many local F&B brands that struggled to digitalise their operations during circuit breaker in March 2020, he was a lap ahead in pivoting his business for the work-from-home narrative. Without the burden of rental costs, he had a surplus of cash flow to invest in other areas like branding and R&D.
Prior to the pandemic, the brand’s digital presence targeted primarily at B2B clientele such as MNCs, hotels, and restaurant chains. He eventually decided to shift focus towards work-from-home employees, and took the opportunity to undergo a major rebrand. With a refreshed look, The Kettle Gourmet successfully elevated its social media presence and received very good response from the work-from-home crowd. As a result, revenue skyrocketed by over 200 percent, an almost impossible milestone for F&B brands to achieve in a pandemic-stricken time.
He continues to leverage on this digital advantage by partnering ecommerce platforms, influencers and livestreamers. He also stays connected to his customers by incentivising them to share feedback on the popcorn flavors.
Expanding The Business Post-Pandemic
Despite his early success in The Kettle Gourmet, Zac continues to work on building up his business foundation in Singapore instead of rushing to expand overseas. Even after gaining the attention of potential investors, he believes in taking it slow and raising “smart money” (the concept of bringing in investors with the right expertise). This is also a key reason why he has been running the business alone since its launch in 2017.
Now, things are certainly looking rosier for The Kettle Gourmet, as Zac shares his ambition of scaling the business by 10 times in the next 3 years. This ambition will involve eventually expanding into major export markets in Asia, notably China, Hong Kong and Philippines. While he focuses on building his local presence, he has already started looking to partner big distributors with a regional presence.
For Singapore, he will continue to focus on R&D to develop new flavors. In fact, customers can look forward to two new flavors launching before Christmas this year! Following the success of The Kettle Gourmet’s licensing deal with Pokémon GO – which achieved a record sales of 1,000 orders on the first day of launch – he has plans to enter other licensing deals. Besides crunching on popcorn, he is also preparing to venture into a new snack category – a major step towards building his food conglomerate.
Practical Tips for Young Entrepreneurs
No matter how busy he is, he always makes time to recharge his mind by exercising, reading, journaling and meditating – something he recommends fellow entrepreneurs to practice in their daily lives. “Work on the business, not for the business”. Among the books that he has read, he finds The 5AM Club by Robin Sharma and Die with Zero by Bill Perkins to be useful in recalibrating his perspective towards life.
He also highlighted the importance of expanding our professional network by joining communities such as Entrepreneurship Organization and Bosses Network Young Chapter. “Network is everything. It’s not what you know, but who you know”.
Last but not least, to do what we love. Being an entrepreneur is a lonely and stressful endeavor, and we will be motivated to continue if we are passionate about what we do.
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