Ordering in food has never been more tempting. The coronavirus pandemic and ban on dining in restaurants after 6pm (until April 20) have encouraged a flurry of Hong Kong micro-food entrepreneurs to jump on the meal delivery bandwagon. Some are cooking because their regular employment dried up; others see it as an opportunity to ride a growing wave. They all face the same hurdle: scaling up from amateur hobbyist to running a professional business. Former beauty industry executive Yvonne Chu had been indulging her culinary passion since 2017, using her Tai Hang home as a private kitchen. But in 2020, as social preferences changed from gathering to distancing, Chu tried offering food packs with individual servings to her clients instead of hosting whole meals. “I couldn’t do private dinners so I tried food packs under the label Gourmet At Home,” says Chu, whose private kitchen is called Y’s Kitchen. “Right now, it is all just for friends or referrals. It’s kept me very busy. I’m still freelance and not licensed yet. A versatile cook, Chu can wrap duck in lotus leaf or prepare it confit-style. She makes elegant desserts and cleverly uses a can of black bean dace fish for a fusion Caesar salad. But in trying to create a viable business, she feels handicapped without a professional kitchen and staff. 7 top Hong Kong food delivery services to make lockdown a bit tastier “To make more food packs, I would need to find a kitchen,” Chu admits. “The biggest challenge is finding a licensed and affordable place, then finding workers. I’m doing everything by myself. “If I want to scale up, I have to do three to four times the quantity to turn a profit. But that’s so much work, I will end up spending all the revenue on a therapist. “Another main thing is the price point. With Gourmet At Home, I’m trying to bring premium restaurant-grade cuisine into people’s homes at a good price point, like HK$300 (US$38) for a serving of suckling pig. “That is not cheap compared to other options, but customers so far have accepted this price range. But for mass retail like in supermarkets, maybe it won’t work. It might be easier to find a kitchen space than develop a profitable formula.” In contrast, the founders of Malaysian food outlet Mamak Tungchung cannot keep up with customer demand. Malaysians Wyzek Wong and Azeroy Haja launched the venture in 2021, selling dishes such as mee goreng and Sarawak laksa, when they had to take unpaid leave from their jobs at Hong Kong International Airport. “Both of us were in the airline industry and put on furlough,” Wong explains. “There are a lot of Malaysians in Hong Kong, so we just started with some food sharing. We cooked for friends and got good feedback. We then decided to expand a little bit for other Malaysians who couldn’t go home. Haja says: “We just posted pictures on social media and friends would say ‘Oh, I want some of that.’ One thing led to another and we suddenly had lots of demand.” They registered a company, got a licence and began taking orders for lunchboxes and personally delivering them. After outgrowing their home kitchen, they fortuitously met local TV personality and Swiss-Chinese chef Jacques Kagi, who offered his industrial kitchen in Yuen Long in the New Territories to Wong and Haja. Singapore’s best new restaurants that braved opening during the pandemic “We started there in November,” Haja says. “We looked at a couple of other kitchens but they required a big capital investment, so we were lucky to find something that suited our budget. We are currently not doing this full-time. “The biggest challenges are logistics and rental. Everything in Hong Kong is expensive. We were thinking of getting a delivery van, but then you have to look for parking and these things add up. We’re just a two-man operation. If we want to expand, we’ll have to hire, but it’s difficult to plan in a pandemic.” Beyond the logistics and space advantage of a professional kitchen, Wong is especially happy to not have to cook large amounts of sambal and rendang in his apartment in Tung Chung, on Lantau Island near the airport. [The cloud kitchen] is like a little community, very nice and friendly … I like talking so it’s good for me Siony Yumul, owner of Siony’s Lutong Bahay “Malaysian cooking requires quite a bit of frying, so a regular flat couldn’t handle the smoke and oil. The whole place would be greasy, smelly and unpleasant. So that is a huge relief. You need good ventilation for the chilli paste, and neighbours who won’t complain.” With so many budding food entrepreneurs came the concept, new for Hong Kong, of cloud kitchens. If co-working studios incubate virtual start-ups, food delivery enterprises are gestated in cloud kitchens (sometimes called ghost kitchens). Many are large warehouses divided into small, self-contained cooking areas to rent. More than just providing kitchen space, some extend themselves as service providers, offering marketing, logistics and business consultation to their small-scale clients. Popular Filipino food seller Siony’s Lutong Bahay is one example. Ray Yumul and his mother, Siony, have opted for a space at Fresh Lane in Sai Ying Pun, Western, to prepare their sisig, adobo, beef caldereta and other Filipino favourites. “We started officially in 2013 as a catering business,” Ray Yumul says. “My mom had worked for other restaurants and obviously cooking is her passion. It started slowly [and spread] by word of mouth. We offer catering, delivery and sometimes cook at other’s homes. “Basically [Fresh Lane] tries to support and help us set up. There’s a pickup counter for deliveries. They offer marketing ideas, market intel and even link us with other companies for possible partnerships. They even do regular seminars like social media marketing. It’s a full service. Most kitchens just offer a kitchen and that’s it.” Siony Yumul adds: “And it’s like a little community, very nice and friendly (with other food producers). I like talking so it’s good for me. “I’m just a simple mother making my food. It’s all natural ingredients. I go to the market every day. I don’t even use canned ingredients. That’s why our name is Lutong Bahay. It means home cooking.” Some day, Siony Yumul would love to have her own bricks-and-mortar restaurant, but Hong Kong property is pricey, she says. However, her virtual restaurant is doing pretty well serving authentic, delicious Filipino food at a reasonable price. “Since we’ve been on [delivery app] Food Panda, we’ve become more accessible,” Siony says. “We’re doing deliveries Monday to Saturday, and possibly expanding to more platforms. But if we have a catering job then we inform customers we will be offline for that period. And when we close, customers complain. “We can’t really hire more people because there’s no space (in our cloud kitchen). I can cook fast on my own, doing the work of two or three people. But it’s about the space. “For now, I can cater for 100 people by myself. My diehard customers complain if I don’t do the cooking.” As Chu tries to develop her Gourmet At Home food packs, the process of looking for the right cloud kitchen is just beginning. “Some of the kitchens are actually not that nice,” Chu reveals. “They just have a licence but the venue is not as good as my own kitchen. So it’s like, do I want to just pay for a poor-quality kitchen for its licence?”