Local F&B entrepreneurs would unanimously agree that two decades is a lifetime to remain in business. Soaring labour and ingredient costs aside, surely the eye-watering rents would be enough to drive an honest proprietor to rack and ruin — not to mention the occasional black swan event such as financial crises and a full-blown pandemic.
Despite rolling with those punches to establish Awfully Chocolate as an enduring, 27-year-old local brand, its co-founder Lyn Lee is adamant about not downplaying the towering odds stacked against her and her counterparts. She has even declined interviews on the hot-button issue of rising rents.
“I don't want to be used to say, ‘See, Awfully Chocolate can survive because they did this and that. You didn't pivot.’ I will not be drawn into that,” she said.
A tendency to couch her words in careful disclaimers hints at Lee’s former career in law. But on one point, she’s unequivocal: “In any one of those cases of a business shutting down reported in the news, it was 100 per cent because of the rent,” she added emphatically.
Yet, amid growing calls for government intervention to rein in rent hikes and safeguard local businesses, Lee stops short of echoing those demands and leans instead toward forging stronger support networks among fellow tenants. “If we all started looking at how we could band together and support one another, that should be an improvement. Otherwise, the market may correct itself.”
While the laws of capitalism may stand in the way of rent control, she does however, argue that a vibrant F&B sector doesn't develop by happenstance. “Everyone says, Singapore is so boring and everything is the same. But if you don't have different markers for how to have different types of businesses, it will be very dull.”
Fitting into a ubiquitous mould was far from Lee and her co-founders’ minds when they launched Awfully Chocolate in 1998, in the upheaval of the Asian Financial Crisis. There, in a quiet nook of pre-gentrified Katong, the friends opened a flagship store offering just one item: A simple chocolate cake they’d spent months refining.
Focusing single-mindedly on just one product — with no fallback plan and zero market research to hitch their wagon to — was nothing short of audacious.
Awfully chocolate opened its first store in Katong. It started by just selling one chocolate cake then. (Photo: Awfully Chocolate)
Family and friends dismissed the venture as a non-starter and gave it two months to survive. “To them, we were making very weird decisions,” she recalled. “‘How can you open in Katong, where it's all about laksa and Peranakan food? Who's going to go there to buy a whole cake?’”
But Lee and her co-founders, then in their 20s, weren’t swayed. In her words, they were “contrarian” — more inclined to go against the grain than follow it. “My partners were ‘Katong-ites’. They said we had to be where the best food is, and that if you could make it in Katong, you could make it anywhere else,” recounted Lee.
While none of them possessed F&B experience, the huddle of dreamers had long flirted with the idea of embarking on “some cool adventure.” Lee, a former lawyer who worked at leading law firm Allen & Gledhill, had left the profession to work in a media company. She convinced her young and restless crew to join her in her pursuit for the “perfect chocolate cake.”
It took months of folding batter into submission, and plying loved ones with chocolate cake, before they sank funds into leasing their Katong store. Its stark, pared down aesthetic had less to do with design intent than with the reality of a skint budget. They could scarcely afford a refrigerator, let alone a display counter.
Original Dark Chocolate Truffles. (Photo: Awfully Chocolate)
“Our friend who helped to design the logo asked, ‘Why do you need a display counter when you’re only selling one cake? It would look so silly to display 12 dark brown circles’,” she recalled. Defying convention, she said, helped them to stand out in a space saturated with Ultraman cakes dripping in chromatic excess. “I believe the early articles called us the cake shop that doesn't look like a cake shop. It was quite cutting-edge.”
Their first big break came from a feature in lifestyle magazine 8 Days, after being discovered by playwright Michael Chiang, who was formerly the editorial director of Mediacorp Publishing. “When he chose to feature this funky little cake shop, it drew attention, because back then they wrote about music and entertainment, not food,” shared Lee.
The publicity pole-vaulted the business into the public consciousness, and the phone didn't stop ringing after that. “We could only bake around 50 cakes a day, so we would sell out and go home,” she recalled.
Lyn Lee wears her late father’s favourite cream suit from the ‘80s. (Photo: Aik Chen/CNA)
Awfully Chocolate became a cult chocolate cake brand early in the game — thanks, in no small part, to a quality some would have written off as foolhardiness. “We were gutsy, a little foolish, but we believed there might be enough room for us to do trial and error,” said Lee. She now tries to pass on some of that scrappy, self-starting spirit to her team, whom she encourages to produce their publicity videos in-house.
“I'm always pushing the younger generation to not worry that they may not have a formal qualification in something that the job scope requires,” shared the 52-year-old.
Growing a hole-in-the-wall setup into an international brand — with franchises once spanning Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong — has, however necessitated no small measure of agility.
Rather than framing her entrepreneurial journey as a dichotomy of missteps and masterstrokes, Lee views it as a series of moves, “one step at a time.” When Awfully Chocolate first ventured into urban malls, the co-founders realised that shoppers weren't inclined to lug an entire cake from store to store. In response, they began opening cafes that offered cake by the slice, along with a medley of bite-sized indulgences including chocolate truffles and ice cream. Over time, they uncovered new revenue streams — from corporate gifting to, more recently, a product line curated for hotels.
The now defunct store at Cluny Court. Its stark, pared down aesthetic had less to do with design intent than with the reality of a skint budget. (Photo: Awfully Chocolate)
That’s not to say they haven’t made big swings, either. At the end of 2024, they launched their own roastery in China, where they’ve been experimenting with innovations such as tea brewed from caffeine-free cacao husks. The latter is served at The Awfully Chocolate Experience Cafe that opened in Wisma Atria that same year. “We’ve had exchanges with leading agricultural scientists from Wilmar International, and learnt how to use some of their healthy plant-based innovations,” shared Lee.
Years of investing heavily in research and development for their B2B arm have paid off. “We have this whole in-house setup where corporates can give us a vague idea of what they want and our R&D, design and marketing teams will just bring it to life,” she said. These capabilities, she noted, have to an extent girded them against the vagaries of an increasingly volatile rental market.
Other external pressures brought to bear upon the business include the COVID-19 pandemic that hit like a sledgehammer to their China operations. “From over 60 stores, we were whittled down to just a handful in two cities,” she revealed, adding that conditions in the mainland remain challenging amid a sluggish economy.
The Awfully Chocolate Experience Cafe in Wisma Atria. (Photo: Awfully Chocolate)
While the pandemic took its toll on business in Singapore, Lee says they pulled through by biting the bullet and forgoing their salaries, for the most part, during those trying months. “One of my business partners who did a lot of work restructuring companies during the Asian Financial Crisis shared that those that made it had teams that came together and believed that they would come out stronger if they made the sacrifices,” she related. “When everyone starts thinking about themselves, that’s when you see the whole thing fall apart.”
Working with her friends for close to three decades, she insists, has been a blast, with no major conflict to grouse of. “I’m very much a frontline person — I always think like a customer. Some of my partners, on the other hand, aren’t that way,” she laughed. “But that's the wonderful diversity and synergy between different personalities.”
While the close-knit group may wax facetious about the “cliche” of building a business on Lee's love of chocolate, it’s proven to be a richly layered endeavour. For one, delving into the nuances of the Singaporean palate has deepened her appreciation for her country itself. Locals, she observes, tend to favour dark chocolate that’s neither overly rich nor cloying, with a warm, toasty finish.
“I almost liken this to how amazing Singapore's food is. Like how there must be wok hei
Continue reading...
Despite rolling with those punches to establish Awfully Chocolate as an enduring, 27-year-old local brand, its co-founder Lyn Lee is adamant about not downplaying the towering odds stacked against her and her counterparts. She has even declined interviews on the hot-button issue of rising rents.
“I don't want to be used to say, ‘See, Awfully Chocolate can survive because they did this and that. You didn't pivot.’ I will not be drawn into that,” she said.
A tendency to couch her words in careful disclaimers hints at Lee’s former career in law. But on one point, she’s unequivocal: “In any one of those cases of a business shutting down reported in the news, it was 100 per cent because of the rent,” she added emphatically.
Yet, amid growing calls for government intervention to rein in rent hikes and safeguard local businesses, Lee stops short of echoing those demands and leans instead toward forging stronger support networks among fellow tenants. “If we all started looking at how we could band together and support one another, that should be an improvement. Otherwise, the market may correct itself.”
While the laws of capitalism may stand in the way of rent control, she does however, argue that a vibrant F&B sector doesn't develop by happenstance. “Everyone says, Singapore is so boring and everything is the same. But if you don't have different markers for how to have different types of businesses, it will be very dull.”
CHASING THE PERFECT CHOCOLATE CAKE
Fitting into a ubiquitous mould was far from Lee and her co-founders’ minds when they launched Awfully Chocolate in 1998, in the upheaval of the Asian Financial Crisis. There, in a quiet nook of pre-gentrified Katong, the friends opened a flagship store offering just one item: A simple chocolate cake they’d spent months refining.
Focusing single-mindedly on just one product — with no fallback plan and zero market research to hitch their wagon to — was nothing short of audacious.
Awfully chocolate opened its first store in Katong. It started by just selling one chocolate cake then. (Photo: Awfully Chocolate)
Family and friends dismissed the venture as a non-starter and gave it two months to survive. “To them, we were making very weird decisions,” she recalled. “‘How can you open in Katong, where it's all about laksa and Peranakan food? Who's going to go there to buy a whole cake?’”
But Lee and her co-founders, then in their 20s, weren’t swayed. In her words, they were “contrarian” — more inclined to go against the grain than follow it. “My partners were ‘Katong-ites’. They said we had to be where the best food is, and that if you could make it in Katong, you could make it anywhere else,” recounted Lee.
While none of them possessed F&B experience, the huddle of dreamers had long flirted with the idea of embarking on “some cool adventure.” Lee, a former lawyer who worked at leading law firm Allen & Gledhill, had left the profession to work in a media company. She convinced her young and restless crew to join her in her pursuit for the “perfect chocolate cake.”
It took months of folding batter into submission, and plying loved ones with chocolate cake, before they sank funds into leasing their Katong store. Its stark, pared down aesthetic had less to do with design intent than with the reality of a skint budget. They could scarcely afford a refrigerator, let alone a display counter.
Original Dark Chocolate Truffles. (Photo: Awfully Chocolate)
“Our friend who helped to design the logo asked, ‘Why do you need a display counter when you’re only selling one cake? It would look so silly to display 12 dark brown circles’,” she recalled. Defying convention, she said, helped them to stand out in a space saturated with Ultraman cakes dripping in chromatic excess. “I believe the early articles called us the cake shop that doesn't look like a cake shop. It was quite cutting-edge.”
Their first big break came from a feature in lifestyle magazine 8 Days, after being discovered by playwright Michael Chiang, who was formerly the editorial director of Mediacorp Publishing. “When he chose to feature this funky little cake shop, it drew attention, because back then they wrote about music and entertainment, not food,” shared Lee.
The publicity pole-vaulted the business into the public consciousness, and the phone didn't stop ringing after that. “We could only bake around 50 cakes a day, so we would sell out and go home,” she recalled.
Lyn Lee wears her late father’s favourite cream suit from the ‘80s. (Photo: Aik Chen/CNA)
Awfully Chocolate became a cult chocolate cake brand early in the game — thanks, in no small part, to a quality some would have written off as foolhardiness. “We were gutsy, a little foolish, but we believed there might be enough room for us to do trial and error,” said Lee. She now tries to pass on some of that scrappy, self-starting spirit to her team, whom she encourages to produce their publicity videos in-house.
“I'm always pushing the younger generation to not worry that they may not have a formal qualification in something that the job scope requires,” shared the 52-year-old.
A RECIPE FOR RESILIENCE
Growing a hole-in-the-wall setup into an international brand — with franchises once spanning Taiwan, China, and Hong Kong — has, however necessitated no small measure of agility.
Rather than framing her entrepreneurial journey as a dichotomy of missteps and masterstrokes, Lee views it as a series of moves, “one step at a time.” When Awfully Chocolate first ventured into urban malls, the co-founders realised that shoppers weren't inclined to lug an entire cake from store to store. In response, they began opening cafes that offered cake by the slice, along with a medley of bite-sized indulgences including chocolate truffles and ice cream. Over time, they uncovered new revenue streams — from corporate gifting to, more recently, a product line curated for hotels.
The now defunct store at Cluny Court. Its stark, pared down aesthetic had less to do with design intent than with the reality of a skint budget. (Photo: Awfully Chocolate)
That’s not to say they haven’t made big swings, either. At the end of 2024, they launched their own roastery in China, where they’ve been experimenting with innovations such as tea brewed from caffeine-free cacao husks. The latter is served at The Awfully Chocolate Experience Cafe that opened in Wisma Atria that same year. “We’ve had exchanges with leading agricultural scientists from Wilmar International, and learnt how to use some of their healthy plant-based innovations,” shared Lee.
Years of investing heavily in research and development for their B2B arm have paid off. “We have this whole in-house setup where corporates can give us a vague idea of what they want and our R&D, design and marketing teams will just bring it to life,” she said. These capabilities, she noted, have to an extent girded them against the vagaries of an increasingly volatile rental market.
Other external pressures brought to bear upon the business include the COVID-19 pandemic that hit like a sledgehammer to their China operations. “From over 60 stores, we were whittled down to just a handful in two cities,” she revealed, adding that conditions in the mainland remain challenging amid a sluggish economy.
The Awfully Chocolate Experience Cafe in Wisma Atria. (Photo: Awfully Chocolate)
While the pandemic took its toll on business in Singapore, Lee says they pulled through by biting the bullet and forgoing their salaries, for the most part, during those trying months. “One of my business partners who did a lot of work restructuring companies during the Asian Financial Crisis shared that those that made it had teams that came together and believed that they would come out stronger if they made the sacrifices,” she related. “When everyone starts thinking about themselves, that’s when you see the whole thing fall apart.”
Working with her friends for close to three decades, she insists, has been a blast, with no major conflict to grouse of. “I’m very much a frontline person — I always think like a customer. Some of my partners, on the other hand, aren’t that way,” she laughed. “But that's the wonderful diversity and synergy between different personalities.”
While the close-knit group may wax facetious about the “cliche” of building a business on Lee's love of chocolate, it’s proven to be a richly layered endeavour. For one, delving into the nuances of the Singaporean palate has deepened her appreciation for her country itself. Locals, she observes, tend to favour dark chocolate that’s neither overly rich nor cloying, with a warm, toasty finish.
“I almost liken this to how amazing Singapore's food is. Like how there must be wok hei
Continue reading...