Pricing prevents miscommunication while build trust in F&B

Cai png is economic rice

Cai Png is a dish of economic rice. The term “economic” refers to the affordable dish of rice with several selection of veggies and/or meat.

Unfortunately, there is no price label on the varieties of veggies or meat (aka dishes). Regulation is lax. Hence, regular customers are accustomed to becoming smarter, i.e., they are able to identify expensive dishes (in order to avoid them).

Bait or trap?

Sometimes, meat fried with a batter (aka fritter) can make it difficult to identify the dish. It is thus prudent to ask the stall owner or helper for the identity of the meat, else you will be charged higher for fish, prawn, squid or other seafood. In addition, any veggies fried with anchovies, small shrimps, or other seafood may also be charged as meat or “seafood”, and you end up paying higher price for the dish than normal veggies.

It is unfortunate that you are misled to think that you are ordering vegetables, while in actuality you are not. It may be frustrating when you have to argue with the stall owner. It brings back memory of pre-Jover Chew’s Sim Lim Square time when regulation and standards were poor there (ref. 3).

It is a trap

A cai png with fish at AMK Mayflower hawker centre that cost $11 was a trap (ref. 1). It was a TRAP because the dish was not priced and customer assumed that the dish in a hawker centre should be reasonably priced. Unfortunately, there was no price label or pricing table. It is understandable that the customer was shocked and upset.

The owner had justified the price of her mackerel at $8 per slice by suggesting that her fish was bought “fresh” versus frozen. Such justification is completely irrelevant and illogical. What’s next, Premium Wahyu beef fritters fried with veggies that would cost $10 per scoop? If she had the audacity to price her fish slice at $8, she should be more responsible to include a price tag there to prevent potential misunderstanding, especially when cai png at hawker centre is hardly as expensive as hers.

Alas, it is understandable that she had more motivation to lay the “trap” at her stall for gullible patrons to step than to act responsibly (by displaying the price). Unfortunate for her, in the age if social media, her act can become viral (i.e., highly shared in social media).

Include price to build trust

If you want to build cuatomer trust, ensure your business practices are ethical. Else, you will become viral and untrustworthy, regardless of how much you justified your act (especially when it made lesser sense after the reasoning).

Reference

Cai Png with fish from AMK Mayflower hawker centre costs S$11 (https://mothership.sg/2022/06/economy-rice-expensive-singapore/)
Hawker who sold viral $11 cai png with fish explains why it is so expensive (https://goodyfeed.com/viral-11-cai-png-responds/)
Jover Chew, former boss of Mobile Air jailed 33 months for conning customers, also fined $2000 (https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/courts-crime/jover-chew-former-boss-of-mobile-air-jailed-33-months-for-conning-customers)

Daun Ketapang (or Indian Almond Leave) is used to keep betta fish

Betta fish is also known as Siamese fighting fish (Betta splendens) found in freshwater and native to South-East Asia.

Aquarists who keep this fish will use Daun Ketapang (Indian Almond leave, Terminalia catappa) in the water when their fish is sick or lethargic. The dried leave are added to the water, where they will lower its pH and infuse the water with beneficial chemicals. One major chemical component is tannic acid and tannins.

The Ketapang is useful to treat fish skin ailment. The antimicrobial tannin kills bacteria, fungus, and viruses. It is better alternative to the fish antibiotics (ref. 2)

How to make almond leaf extract? The tannin and other phytochemicals are water soluble. You can increase the chemical release by pouring hot water over the dry leave and incubate overnight until the water changes colour. Keep the solution chilled for months.

Tannin is a non-toxic phenol that function as crosslinking agent (ref. 3). It is used to agglutinate microbes in order to inactivate them. Its crosslinking property is beneficial in wound healing (ref. 4)

Tannin has been used in leather-making industry where curing involves chemical crosslinking afforded by adding tannin to the leather (ref. 5).

Reference

Where to find Ketapang leaf (aka Indian Almond Leaf) (https://bettaboy.wordpress.com/2017/09/11/where-to-find-ketapang-leaf-aka-indian-almond-leaf/)
Indian Almond Leaves: Keeping your fish happy, naturally, 7 Apr 2021 (https://fishlab.com/indian-almond-leaves/)
Effect of tannic acid as crosslinking agent on fish skin gelatin-silver nanocomposite film (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214289418300747)
The use of tannins in the local treatment of burn wounds – a pilot study (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3346037/)
Tanning (leather) (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tanning_(leather))

Business owners with lousy website security self-block businesses

Lackadaisical attitude by business owner irks customers

You can call it sabotage, rivalry action, or callousness (or lackadaisical).

Business owners who don’t put thoughts into maintaining its web presence can only display its lack of professionalism. The trait is a letdown to potential customers.

Get professional help or web development platforms

A business should hire only professionals to maintain its website. If not, at least get an IT-competent staff to subscribe to web development platforms such as WordPress, Wix or GoDaddy to maintain their website!

Unsecured website is a threat to customers

Alas, their inaptitude can cause harm to customers/visitors who visit their website (Fig. 1-2).

Those with anti-virus will pick up the threat and render their website useless (Fig. 3).

Site can’t be reached. Conversion funnel is nil.

If businesses such as UTOC (Singapore) Pte Ltd can’t be bothered with its web security, it can only expect zero customer from CONVERSION FUNNEL attributed to website presence.

Fig. 1 AVG detected and aborted threat from a website

Fig. 2 AVG history displayed the threat blocked from a website

Fig. 3 Website with threats will not be available in the user’s broswer

Phillip Capital Poems GTD, Cash, and fees

It is easy to open an account to invest in securities in Singapore. Register for an account in any stock broker, e.g., Phillip Capital. You will receive a CDP account (from SGX) and an online trading platform POEMS account.

Next, open a bank account for Electronic Payment System (EPS) and link it to POEMS. Install the apps on your phone and you can trade any time any where.

If you want to use your CPF to invest in securities, you can apply for CPF Investment Scheme (CPFIS), where you can invest securities using your ordinary account (OA) and special account (SA). Please note the cost-and-benefit of using CPF to invest, e.g., CPF provides yearly interest of at least 2.5% p.a.

POEMS allow you to add securities to watch list, add price alerts, and trade by limit order, and good to day (GTD). The commission fee is $25 per transaction per day (excludes other fees).

For successful purchase of securities with Cash, you have to pay within T+2. Payment is by bank transfer to Phillips Securities via EPS. It takes T+1 to effect the bank transfer.

It is convenient to buy via GTD, but the risk is that if you have multiple ‘partial completions’ to complete an order, especially in ‘sluggish’ counters, you will have to pay for multiple commission fees at $25 for each transaction per day. E.g., I had to pay $25 + $25 for two partial orders of 1000 units and 2000 units of securities (for a GTD limit order of 3000 units). What happens if I have 3 partial transactions? I will have to pay commission fee of $75.

I am still learning how to trade and currently only looking at SGX securities. There are other exchanges that I haven’t ventured.

Start investing when you start to work. Know your assets, liabilities, and equity.

siekitchen@gmail.com
3 Jul 2021

As a working person, it is important to understand your assets, liabilities, and equity (i.e., A=LE). Let us look at the following examples.

Assets

Intangible assets

We start of with this asset.

Your qualification/skill is your intangible asset. It allows you to earn revenue via service contract with your boss, i.e., through job or freelancing. To be relevant, it is important to continue your education (aka lifelong learning). That way, you don’t make your intangible asset ‘obsolete’.

However, invest in education should be decided based on the cost-benefit analysis (CBA). Benefit should outweigh the cost. Select relevant and value-added courses that will help you to improve your intangible assets. It MUST NOT be a ‘trophy qualification’.

Real property

Real property is a good asset in Singapore. It is subjected to capital appreciation (i.e., value increase/decrease by market demand).

If the asset is bought by a home loan (i.e., mortgage or debt), then the asset is a mix of liabilities + equity (L+E). The bank co-owns the property. As you repay the loan, you reclaim more equity over your property.

The expenses that you pay for your property are the property tax, bank interest on loan, conservancy charges or monthly maintenance fees.

In comparison to rent, paying a housing loan is an ‘investment’ (plus expense/interest). You pay for the ‘equity’ over time. In contrast, if you pay rent, it is entirely your expenses (without return). In countries where the property market is constantly in over-supply, property is considered a risky investment.

The challenges to buy a property are the significant down-payment, one-time transaction costs, renovation/furnishing costs, and securing loan.

Car

Car is not an asset, unless it brings revenue, e.g., when you are ‘moonlighting’ as a Grab driver. There is no capital appreciation (increase in value), except depreciation. The depreciation value can be above $10k per year. Other expenses involved in owning a car are interest, petrol, maintenance, parts replacement, etc.

Liabilities

Loans

Loans are derived from Education, Property, and Car purchases.

Property loan can help to grow your asset (dependent on its capital appreciation). It can be a loss if there is a glut (i.e., over-supply) that caused depreciated value.

Education loan helps improve your intangible asset and allow you to generate revenue (i.e., salary/service fees).

Car loan can be used to generate revenue (or ‘cost recovery’) if you use it in gig economy of ‘shared rides’. Else, it depreciates rapidly.

Equity

Property

As you repay your mortgage, you start to increase your equity over that property. The final asset value depends on market demand. If there is uptrend, you earn profit from its capital appreciation.

Summary

The above is an example of your assets, liabilities and equity. Everyone starts off with intangible assets and sometimes liabilities such as education loan. But over time, you should be able to reduce your liabilities and improve your equity. The more asset you accumulate, the higher their values appreciate, the more you keep your equity.

Other assets that I did not mention are in share-holding (i.e., equity market), starting your own business, other investments, and insurance that protects your asset/health. Insurance is a liability if it is short-term, but some are structured to have lower expenses/premium over longer-term commitment. It is important to start your insurance policy early, especially if you want to start a family and have several liabilities under your belt.

Advice from other gurus

Grow your asset
- intangible asset (i.e., your qualification/skill)
- invest part of your salary
  - knowledge acquisition, e.g., books, courses
  - share-holding or investments that has at least 1% p.a. return (e.g., saving bonds, insurance savings plan)
  - once you have sum for down-payment, invest in property
- assets to consider
  - shares
  - property
  - intangible assets (yourself)
Reduce your liabilities
- get into loans that have better benefits/returns, e.g., property or continuous education
- avoid loans that don’t add value. If you must own a car, wait until your asset grow and you can afford to draw out from your growing equity.
Manage your expenses
- it is good to spend money to improve your well-being. This is considered as maintaining your ‘intangible asset’ (or mental health), but don’t overspend and accrue credit card debts.
- understand your recurring expenses. If there are ways/alternatives to reduce these expenses, do it.
- consider implementing ‘cost-recovery’ if your expenses are too high, e.g., car debt repayment can be offset by moonlighting as grab driver to earn revenue. If this is property repayment, consider renting out a room to a colleague to offset the monthly home loan repayment.

Hawker stall rental using bidding system is flawed

Bidding is a competitive process where contenders (i.e., bidders) express the price they are willing to pay for the item presented (with ask price). Anyone who expressed the highest bid price wins the item.

Singapore National Environmental Agency (NEA) is entity that offer the tender for bidders to express their highest price for monthly stall rental (ref. 1).

Bidding is susceptible to spikes and outliers, e.g. a lady who bidded $10,028 per month for a hawker stall to sell drink. According to NEA, the average price is $1,500 within a range of $5 to $5,000 (ref. 3). This would mean that the rental is $1,500 +/- 20% or from $1,200 to $1,800. So, the $10k monthly rental is considered very high for a drink stall.

The bidding process is also susceptible to those bidders who are out to win the bid and then sublet or assign the winning at higher price to others (in order to profit). NEA said they ensured that sublet and reassignment are not allowed, but did not elaborate how they will monitor and control this practice. I guess it would require stall operators to report this to the authorities.

For more information refer to ref. 4.