‘Whole deck of cards just toppled’: FoodXervices’ Nichol Ng on how a 92-year-old family business unravelled – and what’s next

[SINGAPORE] An ill-timed property bet, a generational pandemic and a wave of customer closures – just any one of these would have been a severe setback for a business.

But for third-generation food distributor FoodXervices, all three hit at once; eventually, something had to give.

That moment came in April, when the company abruptly shut down and entered voluntary liquidation, drawing the curtain on a 92-year family business legacy.

“The whole deck of cards just toppled in the second half of March this year,” recalled Nichol Ng, co-founder of FoodXervices, in a recent interview with The Business Times.

At the time of its closure, the company had about 50 employees. All were laid off, with some salaries for April unpaid, pending the outcome of the liquidation.

It is also working with its suppliers and customers to link them up, to help ensure some continuity of sales and build new business networks.

Set up by Ng and her brother Nicholas, FoodXervices traces its roots to 1934, when the original family business, Ng Chye Mong, was started by their grandfather.

The company was later rebranded as FoodXervices after the siblings bought out and sought to modernise the food distribution business in 2007. Its closure was announced in early April through an Instagram post.

A big bet – at the worst possible time

FoodXervices’ troubles began in January 2020, mere weeks before the Covid-19 pandemic swept across the world.

SEE ALSO

Boss of multimillion-dollar firm was once doubted for her youth and gender

Singapore’s FoodXervices – long-time supplier to F&B sector – calls it a day after 92 years

That month, the company had just completed construction of its new S$50 million headquarters in Pandan Loop. The 250,000-square-foot facility was five times the size of the warehouse it previously occupied in Keppel Road. Construction began in 2018.

To fund the development, FoodXervices took a bank loan amounting to 80 per cent of the project cost.

At the time, the investment appeared to make sense. The food distribution sector was in its “golden years” from 2015 to 2019, said Ng.

The food and beverage industry, which FoodXervices supplied, was “doing very well”, while funding costs were low and banks were “very willing” to support F&B businesses and their suppliers.

When the siblings joined the family business in 2002, sales were less than S$2 million, Ng said. By 2007, when FoodXervices was incorporated and the business rebranded, revenue had risen to about S$12 million.

The top line continued to grow, reaching a record S$65 million in the financial year ended 2020. “The growth was very rapid, backed by a very healthy F&B ecosystem, and we grew from 1,000 to 5,000 customers.”

That gave the siblings the confidence to build the Pandan Loop facility, dubbed Xpace.

Beyond serving as a logistics facility for FoodXervices, the building was meant to be a “co-working” space for other F&B players, offering shared services such as central kitchens and storage.

“Just an empty building”

Then, the pandemic struck.

Sales plunged 90 per cent almost overnight, as many F&B clients saw footfall disappear amid movement restrictions. Plans to lease out spaces for co-working and shared services also fell through, as potential tenants held back in an uncertain environment.

“At that point, it was just an empty building,” said Ng.

For a time, government rental and salary support measures helped the company, which then had about 250 employees, get through the initial months.

But as the scale of the financial strain became clearer, the pressure mounted. Electricity and logistics overheads alone were close to S$500,000 a month, even as sales had declined to roughly the same level.

The company’s management was then told by its creditor to find a buyer for the building. Other banks also pulled trade lines, Ng said.

Such trade lines, a form of working capital facility, were critical to cash flow. The industry norm was for food distributors to give customers a 90-day payment period, while they had only 30 days to pay their own suppliers.

That mismatch meant distributors relied heavily on banks to finance working capital, Ng explained.

“When the banks stopped the trade lines, it stopped our blood flow,” she said. Without that financing, the company could not buy, and therefore sell, as much stock as before.

At the same time, the F&B ecosystem was weakening. Many of FoodXervices’ customers shuttered during this period, Ng said, while higher manpower and ingredient costs added to the strain.

The pain showed up in the financials. Revenue fell every year after FY2020 – the 12 months ended Apr 30, 2020, when it stood at S$65 million – to S$21.4 million in FY2024. The company posted losses in every year except FY2021.

A long fight to survive

From 2020 to 2026, the business tried various ways to stay afloat, including shifting to an asset-light model, said Ng. She also sold her matrimonial home and injected the proceeds into the company.

FoodXervices went through a restructuring in 2023, which included negotiating new trade lines, trimming headcount further through attrition, and bringing in a new investor to fund the business.

It eventually found a buyer for Xpace, selling the facility to an unnamed Australian fund in 2024. But the proceeds were only enough to repay the bank.

After the sale, FoodXervices remained in the same premises, paying monthly rent of about S$300,000.

It also transferred its logistics function – comprising about 30 delivery trucks and 150 employees – to one of its existing logistics partners. The partner took over the workers’ salaries and truck leases, and in turn charged FoodXervices for logistics services.

But the company’s financial position continued to deteriorate as more large customers closed. It eventually fell behind on its rent, and also owed banks on new trade lines secured after the 2023 restructuring.

Its landlord took one of its subsidiaries to court in October 2025, as that subsidiary held the tenancy agreement. FoodXervices was still negotiating the rental arrears, including instalment plans, while also seeking fresh funding from a potential new investor.

Those ongoing talks gave Ng confidence that the business could survive. That was why FoodXervices signed an agreement with the Singapore Business Federation (SBF) on Mar 13 to help companies identify skills gaps and redesign jobs.

It was also appointed a SkillsFuture “Queen Bee” for the wholesale trade sector in August 2024. The term refers to industry leaders tapped by SkillsFuture Singapore to support training across the wider industry, including among peers, suppliers and customers.

“We were very confident that we (would have been) able to get past March in a very good way,” said Ng, when asked why the SBF agreement was signed while the company was still under financial stress.

But later that month, the revival plan collapsed. The landlord rejected the potential new investor, while the existing investor from 2023 pulled funding at the same time amid the ongoing Middle East conflict, which began on Feb 28, Ng said.

That left FoodXervices with no lifeline.

Faced with eviction from its “home” in Xpace, and with no investor funding to settle its current debts, the siblings decided to place FoodXervices in voluntary liquidation in April.

The Food Bank Singapore, a charity founded by the siblings in 2012, is not affected, as it is a separate entity with its own management team.

Asked about her family’s legacy and the business they acquired, Ng was blunt: “A non-profitable business legacy – you might as well not uphold it.

“If a family business can no longer feed your family, then what’s the purpose?”