How Low Boon Chuan transformed Lau Ka Kopitiam in Bedok

Asked if the gamble has been worth it, he says it is too early to tell. He still has another four years to repay the loan. He reckons it may take another two years to break even.

His reason for taking the risk was simply to survive. He had no intention to be a coffee-shop boss. 

Low had helped his parents, who started as fishmongers, at their wet market stall and later started selling fish soup, from the age of seven. But as a teenager, he was more interested in basketball and billiards.

He failed his N levels and O levels, which he took as a private candidate. He then enlisted early for national service and signed on as a regular, but quit in 2008 as he wanted a higher income.

The army, he says, taught him discipline and how to push himself.

“There were times when I felt I couldn’t pull through the hardship. But when I felt physically stretched to my limits, somehow I managed to push through.”

After leaving the army, he started a mobile car-grooming business, buying a second-hand van with a $32,000 bank loan. But business was slow and he supplemented his income by doing deliveries.

His mother asked him around 2010 to join her business, saying she was getting older and that he should learn to cook and run the stall.

He turned her down several times before joining part-time in 2011, working from 7pm to 11pm while continuing his delivery jobs.

“I wasn’t close to my mother at that time. I was usually curt to her and felt irritable whenever she spoke to me,” he says.

He manned the cashier and took orders. “I didn’t enjoy working at the stall. It was hot and exceedingly humid, especially with the boiling vats of stock and soup.”

Turning point

What changed his mind was seeing another cook behave rudely towards his mother.

Low decided to learn to prepare the stocks and cook a la minute for customers so she would not have to depend on the employee. It was physically tiring, but he persisted.

Customers shunned him because he did not give as many fish slices as his mother. Some retracted their orders when they saw him cooking. Others specifically asked his mother not to let him prepare their food.

“I would tell them, ‘Then don’t eat’,” he says. “I chased a lot of customers away.

“I was young and took offence easily. I couldn’t control my emotions.”

It took him about a year to master cooking the fish soup.

Working alongside his mother also changed their relationship.

“Working at the stall made me realise how much my mother had sacrificed to raise me and keep the business running,” he says.

By 2015, Low had joined the stall full-time on a fixed monthly salary of $2,000.

He began noticing weaknesses in the business.

“Despite the long queues, the business was not profitable because my mother had no idea about costing. She undercharged customers and often gave regulars too much fish or big discounts,” he says.

He also discovered money disappearing from the till.

Low officially took over the business in 2016, introducing upfront payment and a pager system, and tightening portion and cost controls.

He kept his mother’s recipes largely intact, adding housemade minced pork balls flavoured with flatfish to the fish soup.

The stall’s premium signature is Sliced Red Grouper Soup ($9 for small, $13 for medium and $17 for large).

Low prepares the stock himself after closing. Dried flatfish is fried whole and crushed before being added to batang bones and large pork bones.

The stock takes three hours to boil. Fresh fish, including red grouper, arrives daily from a supplier at Jurong Fishery Port.

Another popular item is Pig’s Stomach Soup ($5 for small, $8 for medium and $11 for large). Tender slices of pig’s stomach come in a cloudy white broth with a sharp spicy kick from white peppercorns.

By 2024, Low had overhauled the team of six fish soup stall employees and trained them well enough for the business to operate without him constantly being there.

He finally had more time to go fishing and deliver donated meals to nursing homes and senior centres, something he has done for close to a decade.

But taking over the coffee shop led to a drastic change in his routine and lifestyle.

Low, who describes himself as an introvert, found himself having to change even his personality.

In the early months, he would arrive at 8am, leave at 10am to make charity deliveries, return for the lunch crowd, go home for a break, then come back at 5pm to chat and sometimes drink with customers until close to midnight.

He wanted to build rapport, get feedback and create some buzz.

The frenetic pace took a toll. Low lost 9kg in his first three months, dropping from 80kg to 71kg.

“I drank so much, I lost my appetite,” he says. These days, he starts work at around 10am, but still ends his day close to midnight as many of his regular customers have turned into friends and enjoy his company at the coffee shop.

There was also a win for his own stall in July, when Boon Keng Road Fish Head Bee Hoon was named a new entrant on the Michelin Guide Singapore Bib Gourmand list.

There are now 16 employees across Lau Ka Kopitiam, including the six at his fish soup stall. Low has no fixed day off.

Apart from work, he is in a long-distance relationship with a 39-year-old Taiwanese kindergarten principal whom he met at a temple dinner while holidaying in Taiwan two years ago.

He says marriage will be further down the road, as “it is still early in our relationship”.

Nor does he plan to take over another coffee shop.

“I prefer to have a more relaxed lifestyle. I just want enough money to live the life I like, do my charity work, deliver food and have time to go fishing.”