From Creamier scoops to retail pints and overseas cafes

BEYOND its established ice cream cafe brands Creamier and Sunday Folks, artisanal dessert group In Great Company (IGC) has expanded into manufacturing for retail, and is venturing abroad again – after an earlier attempt just before Covid-19 hit.

“We’re hoping to have a more diverse revenue stream,” said Khoh Wan Chin, chief executive officer and co-founder of IGC. “It’s actually very challenging for us because business costs are going really, really high.”

She estimates that business costs have increased 30 per cent since last year, partly as Russia’s war in Ukraine has pushed up ingredient costs.

Wage costs have also risen – and will keep rising – due to the government’s progressive wage model, she noted. The model, which sets out wage and career ladders for lower-wage workers, kicked in for the food services sector this March.

Going artisanal early

IGC’s first brand, Creamier Handcrafted Ice Cream & Coffee, opened in 2011 as one of the earlier entrants in Singapore’s fledgling artisanal ice cream scene.

“We kind of stumbled upon this business,” said Khoh. She and her husband, Victor Lim, had just bought a flat in Toa Payoh and were exploring the neighbourhood when they discovered an empty ground-floor shop unit at a Housing and Development Board block.

Both instantly saw the potential for an ice cream cafe that could serve as a gathering point for residents. Said Khoh: “The space was quaint and peaceful, and we just fell in love with it.”

Roping in business partner Audrey Wang, they pumped in S$250,000 of their savings to open Creamier, which sold homemade ice cream and speciality coffee.

“Many people didn’t think we would survive, because they didn’t see a demand for what we were trying to offer,” recalled Khoh, who was running a design consultancy with Lim and had no prior food and beverage (F&B) experience.

“Why spend so much on ice cream or coffee, when you could buy them for less at the nearest kopitiam or 7-Eleven?”

But Creamier gained a following for its waffles and ice cream flavours such as sea salt gula melaka and earl grey lavender. By its second year of operations, the cafe had broken even.

Today, the group has six Creamier outlets. Three of these were opened in 2022 alone, at Punggol, Margaret Market and East Coast.

In 2014, IGC launched a second brand, Sunday Folks, with its first outlet at Chip Bee Gardens. This was followed by a second branch at Ion Orchard in 2021.

Unlike Creamier, which serves traditional “hard” ice cream, Sunday Folks serves ice cream that is churned on the spot. Freshly churned ice cream costs at least 30 per cent more to make than hard ice cream, said Khoh, as the manufacturing process is more tedious.

She added that this explains the more “upmarket” branding of Sundays Folks – which, in turn, has attracted overseas attention.

Scaling up operations 

A turning point came in 2018, when Hong Kong property development group Kerry Properties invited IGC to open a three-month Sunday Folks pop-up store at Shanghai’s Jing An Kerry Centre.

The pop-up was a success. Kerry Properties then offered to have IGC open a permanent store in China.

Yet Khoh turned this down, as she realised the group did not have the right systems in place for scalability.

“We had a lot of takeaways from our pop-up: that in order to grow, we needed to be scalable,” she said.

“But we didn’t have a strong system for production, because we’ve always done things on a very small-scale artisanal (basis). So the best way was to go back to our base in Singapore, and make sure we strengthen our foundation first.”

In 2021, IGC obtained a food manufacturing licence and invested S$500,000 to set up a central kitchen in Singapore.

This allowed the group to centralise ice cream production in one location, as opposed to making separate batches at its individual stores. Sunday Folks’ ice cream is still churned on the spot, but the ice cream mix now comes from the central kitchen too.

The central kitchen was an “important pivot point” for IGC to eventually sell its ice cream on a retail basis, said Khoh.

This September, IGC was approached by supermarket chain NTUC FairPrice, which wanted to be the exclusive retailer of its Creamier ice cream pints, carrying these in FairPrice Finest outlets. Khoh aims for supermarket retail sales to make up 20 per cent of IGC’s overall revenue in the next five years.

Pet-friendly ice cream is another future growth area for the group, she said. In late 2021, Creamier collaborated with home-grown dog food supplier PetCubes to launch a line of dog-friendly ice cream. This was sold at both Creamier and PetCubes’ online and offline stores.

While the collaboration has since ended, Creamier is carrying out research and development for new lines of pet-friendly ice cream, and securing new distribution channels.

Expanding into Indonesia

With stronger systems in place that allow it to scale, IGC is now in a better position to give regional expansion a second try, said Khoh.

In February 2020, the group opened its first overseas Sunday Folks cafe in Jakarta. But the outlet was forced to shut shortly after due to pandemic regulations.

“We tried to do delivery, but it was very difficult... There were many regulations, we couldn’t fly over,” said Khoh. The group eventually decided to close the outlet in January 2022, once its lease was up.

But the setback has not deterred her from giving the Indonesia market another go. This October, IGC opened a Sunday Folks cafe in another Jakarta location, via a joint venture with an Indonesian partner. The branch features an all-day brunch concept and localised desserts exclusive to Indonesia.

“Any business decision carries a risk,” said Khoh. “But Jakarta is a vibrant market with a growing middle class, and we feel that it still holds a lot of potential for an artisanal dessert brand like us.”

Closer to home, Khoh plans to introduce the all-day brunch concept at Creamier’s East Coast outlet in early 2024. Footfall at that outlet has not been as consistent, while the neighbourhood has a “strong brunch culture”, she noted.

The group may introduce this to other Creamier branches in the future, she added: “We recognise that we need to evolve and keep up with our customers’ needs.”