SINGAPORE – In the first month Foxy’s Chikn opened in Joo Chiat Road, its owner Shahrizan Mohamed Sapri lay awake each night worrying over the day’s takings. On several days, the till closed with just $50.
It was a bruising start in the food and beverage (F&B) business for the 42-year-old former police officer, who had left a 23-year career to open the fried chicken eatery. The single father of three had plonked $50,000 of his life savings into the venture.
“I really wanted to cry,” he says. “Many of my friends and family said I was crazy to leave a stable job and do this, especially when F&B is very tough now.” But he felt it was “now or never”, he says.
He resigned in February 2026 and opened Foxy’s Chikn on April 26. The Muslim-owned, 35-seat eatery, which serves hand-battered fried chicken with housemade sauces, stems from his desire to make a fresh start, leave a legacy for his two daughters, aged 15 and 10, and his son, nine, and close a traumatic chapter in their lives.
In 2019, he discovered that his then wife had been physically abusing their two daughters. She was sentenced to three years’ jail in 2021. He later divorced her and was granted sole custody of their three children. Only his superiors and closest friends knew then what his family had endured.
“The irony of my life was that, as a police officer, I was out there protecting the safety of citizens, but at home, I had all these issues to grapple with,” he says, his eyes glistening.
Shahrizan obtained his O levels from East View Secondary School in 2000 and graduated from ITE College East in 2003 with a Nitec in electronics. He served his national service in the police force, then joined the Police Coast Guard as a regular until 2024, when he was transferred to the Police Operations Command Centre as a station inspector.
Fatherhood spurred love for cooking
He met his former wife in 2009 through mutual friends and married her in 2010.
Two years after his first daughter was born in 2011, he began preparing simple dishes such as nasi goreng for her meals. Later, he cooked macaroni, mee goreng and other meals for all three children before or after work.
“Even when I was very tired, I would cook for the family,” he says.
From 2013, he began using his annual leave to attend culinary courses and workshops that lasted three days to a week, learning to make everything from Malay desserts to beverages.
“I wanted to expand my repertoire and improve my cooking techniques,” he says.
Somewhere at the back of his mind was the thought that he might one day venture into F&B.
But before that could happen, his family life unravelled.
In December 2018, after noticing one bruise too many on his daughters, he installed CCTV cameras at home. His then wife, a homemaker, said the bruises were normal because the children often fell down while playing together.
“At first, I believed her,” he says. “But later, I felt it was very odd.”
One evening in June 2019, he returned from work and saw that his elder daughter’s two baby front teeth had fallen out. She was eight.
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