Wow, where do I even start? The past 2 months have been insane. Finally opened our highly-anticipated new Mrs Pho Kitchen & Tsuta Japanese Dining outlets at 313@somerset. After 80 rounds of food tastings, we were all extremely excited.

It was a whirlwind. We had about 500+ people for our pre-opening week, from investors, partners, media, and influencers. But we couldn’t get our hoarding down.The only thing I could do is wryly joke that it’s our form of “private dining.” It was distressing.

To make things worse, we had to delay our grand (public) opening due to the hoarding. We had made all the public announcements to the media, KOLs & opening promotions. We were flummoxed and couldn’t even estimate when we could get the necessary approval.

1.5 days before we were supposed to open to the public, we pivoted to selling sets on our e-commerce store for a week. Came up with the mechanics, execution plan, then proceeded to take pictures… Rushed back home and sat on my chair from 630 pm to 6 am… To code the whole site and 12 product sales pages in 1 night. I swear I barely slept that week, at most 2-3 hours each night.

There were a few times when I looked helplessly at one of my teammates… & with no words spoken, we understood each other’s pain. There were times where we HAD to have wines… otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to go through another minute.

We finally got the approval 🥳🥳 and took down the hoarding on Wed, 27th night. It was … a relief. I cried inside.

When I first saw the outlets without the hoarding, my heart swelled with pride. I felt like an emotional mama seeing her kids for the first time.

Thank you to everyone who came down, posted, tagged, and sent words of encouragement. I also appreciate all the gifts, flowers & packages of love. ♥️ They kept me going and I wish I could give all of you big hugs to personally thank all of you.

Thank you to all of you who supported us by buying the pre-opening sets that we scrambled to put together. And those that went down to brave the queues to dine-in with us.

It wasn’t as smooth-sailing as we wish it was. We made many blunders and at times, our food wasn’t up to standard. We take responsibility for that. We added 30+ new items for Tsuta and 10+ items for Mrs Pho. It was an ambitious endeavour and there were many things we could have improved on.

I promise you, though, that the teams have been working tirelessly non-stop to make sure we improve. Back-breaking work in the hot kitchen from 8 am-11 pm. Standing, cleaning, cooking, in the hopes that we can feed you like our families.

We are not perfect but thank you for all the criticism, feedback and … love. If we haven’t met your standard, let us know. We take your feedback seriously & always strive our best for you. Give us a chance to be better for you.
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BAM! As luck would have it, 2-3 weeks after our opening, Phase 2 Heightened Alert hits us. No dine-ins. F&B is the first to go. While I understand & support the restrictions,…. My heart 💔.

Just gotta keep my chin up & continue fighting! 💪🏻💪🏻 In these 2 months,… We are supposed to be opening 8 new outlets. Launching 2 new concepts + 1 new brand. 4 media weeks. 😂😂😆😆

Sending all of you love. ♥️