This chef left Michelin-starred restaurants to sell mee pok—now he’s opening a S$400K coffee shop
With three retail concepts under its belt, JOFA is looking to run its own coffee shop next
Many salespeople spend years setting up a single table. But for Joel Tan (30), Fabian Lim (30), and Liang Jun Hao (31), one idea was not the ultimate goal.
From a single mee pok shop in Tampines, the three have built a multi-concept business, including Western food, Japanese rice dishes, and soon, their own coffee shop. Along the way, they’ve had their fair share of wins and setbacks, from expanding into new areas to losing more than S$70,000 on a poorly chosen property.
Vulcan Post spoke to Joel of JOFA Grill to find out how the trio built a multi-concept F&B business in Singapore’s competitive retail environment.
It leaves a good restaurant for the merchant scene
Before becoming a retail entrepreneur, Joel spent years working in professional kitchens.
He first met Jun Hao when they were both chefs, but it was his friendship with Fabian that eventually led him to the retail business. Fabian came from a completely different background in construction and had no experience in F&B, but he had long wanted to start a retail business. He went to Joel many times about turning the idea into reality.
During that time, Joel built his career in fine dining, working at Michelin-starred restaurants including Burnt Ends and Joël Robuchon Restaurant. But the idea of building his own thing eventually became too much for him to ignore.
For S$30,000, the couple introduced JOFA Meepok in Tampines in Jul 2021. The name itself is a nod to its founders: “Jo” from Joel, “fa” from Fabian.
Unlike most hawker stalls built on inherited recipes, JOFA Meepok’s formula came from pure trial and error. Before opening, Joel and Fabian spent three to four months going through 10 to 11 different meepok stores, noting what they liked about each one.
“It’s more of a bowl of meepok that we both like to eat, based on our definition,” Joel said.
Rather than putting quality in the hands of a single chef, Joel built the business around a strict standard operating procedure (SOP), specifying everything down to the size of the noodles and the alkaline levels with their supplier, so that any worker can repeat the result consistently.
Customers kept coming back for three items in particular: noodles, homemade chili, and soup made with pork and chicken bones, among other ingredients.
Betting on strong SOPs has paid off. JOFA Meepok broke even in just four months.
Store closures and financial losses
By September 2022, Joel was ready to bring his extensive kitchen experience to bear on his marketing ideas. JOFA’s second concept, JOFA Grill, opened in Bukit Merah Central, with Jun Hao joining the partnership this time.
Inspired by his time at a Panamericana restaurant, Joel introduced charcoal grilling and lychee planks to grill the chicken—an unusual approach to the coffee shop environment, where most Western restaurants relied on flat hot plates. The black pepper sauce was also changed from the restaurant grade recipe and used again to match the prices of the sellers.
But the early days of JOFA Grill were tougher than JOFA Meepok’s.
It cost S$65,000 to set up, and the Bukit Merah location was struggling with an office crowd unwilling to pay S$6 to S$7 for Western food every day, and stiff competition from the nearby food court.
Early media attention brought an increase in customers, but the team was still refining its SOPs for cooking the protein, making it difficult to maintain consistency during busy times. The store finally closed in March 2025.
Meanwhile, JOFA Meepok was learning his hard lessons.
When the brand expanded to a second location at Woodlands Mart in March 2024, its first location moved to multiple locations, often because incoming coffee shop owners wanted to bring in different brands.
One of the costliest mistakes came after the team ended their lease in Tampines. Desperate to avoid paying for storage space while looking for a new place, they moved into a Jalan Besar unit without fully assessing its suitability.
The rent was high, the customer traffic was weak, and sales were so bad that keeping a table open cost more than closing it.
When they tried to get out of the lease early, the co-worker threatened legal action. Unable to absorb the legal costs of the dispute, the founders ended up paying rent on an empty, derelict space for months, incurring a loss of more than S$70,000.
It would be more expensive to run the day-to-day operations than to leave the table empty with that low platform. It was a big lesson for us—not to rush things just to save a little money.
Joel Tan
The team was eventually able to move out of the Jalan Besar location, but after re-evaluating its operations, decided to close the outlet in Jan 2026. Today, JOFA Meepok only operates from its Woodlands Mart location.
To increase resources and grow the business
While the original location of JOFA Grill eventually closed, the group did not give up on the idea.
Instead, they re-introduced the JOFA Grill as part of a two-concept model, combining it JOFA Oji-DonburiJapanese rice bowl line, with stops in Tampines and Punggol.
The business model was also a viable solution to the rising cost of renting retail space in Singapore. By using two concepts under one rental unit, the team can maximize space and resources. The two menus share the same items, ingredients, and staff, with items such as chicken chop appearing on both menus.
The setup proved popular with customers. The first two-concept store in Tampines broke even within six months and has continued to be profitable ever since, prompting the group to open a second location in Punggol’s Northshore Drive.
Over the years, growing to three locations in three concepts and 14 to 16 full-time employees, the founders have pulled back from doing everything by hand.
Two store managers now oversee daily operations, train new hires, and keep standards consistent across all stores. The founders meet with them every month to review customer feedback and consider recipe changes.
Growth has also changed the way founders view their responsibilities. As workers depend on them for their livelihood, leaving is no longer a decision they take lightly.
“I still wake up every day (feeling) tired and stressed,” Joel said, “but I would choose this stress and tiredness any time, any time—because the fulfillment I get from this is different.”
Opening a S$400K coffee shop
After years of navigating landlords and coffee shop operators as tenants—some sensible, some not—the founders of JOFA are now stepping into a new role: becoming operators themselves.
Come Jul, they opened a coffee shop at 531 Bedok North Street 3, in collaboration with three other partners, including former coffee shop owners. The project comes with a set-up cost of approximately S$400,000, which includes renovation, concept planning, and lease deposit.
Rather than buying the property, the group opted for a lease model, typically lasting six to eight years. The JOFA store will house a coffee shop, along with other tenants using complementary concepts.
Diners can expect a JOFA store that focuses on a coffee shop, which may complement the concepts of JOFA and other tenants. “We try to do things the right way and do things the right way,” Joel said, drawing a deliberate comparison to the landlords they were at odds with as tenants.
He admitted that the biggest challenge isn’t running the coffee shop itself—it’s managing the tenants inside it, making sure each shop attracts enough customers to stay open. For now, they hope to break ground within a year and launch the fish soup concept in late 2026, with big ambitions to get 10 stores in the next three years.
Despite the outward appearance of a thriving brand, Joel provided an honest insight into the local F&B industry. Margins in F&B remain strong, and the bar to stay afloat has risen. He added that retailers should explore all ways to make money, including digitizing their business at delivery points.
“It’s not an add-on anymore—it’s a way of life now,” he said of food delivery platforms, arguing that stores that don’t have a digital presence are quietly taking market share away from those that do.
For anyone thinking of starting a retail business, his advice is to treat it as a business first, not a passion project.
“It’s no longer just cooking for friends and family,” he said. Recipes developed for the home kitchen rarely translate to the commercial environment, never mind the costs in the retailer’s environment.
As JOFA enters its fifth year, the founders show no signs of slowing down, as their next venture takes them far from the mee pok shop where it all started.
- Read more about JOFA Grill here.
- Read other articles we’ve written about Singapore businesses here.
Featured Image Credit: CLICK
