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The Kettle Gourmet is honoured to be featured in an article by Dollars And Sense. Read on to find out more about how Zac pushed The Kettle Gourmet to become the #1 popcorn in Singapore.
Background of Zac
Zac was inspired by his late father who was a venture capitalist to start his own business from a young age. Determined to become an entrepreneur, he applied for the Business Management course in Singapore Management University (SMU) to learn about the necessary skills as an entrepreneur. He further enhanced his learning by attending overseas exchange programmes such as travelling to Australia,Belgium and USA.
How it all started
Wanting to start a business he was passionate about instead of jumping on the bandwagon of tech start-ups, he decided on starting a popcorn business, which was his all time favourite snack since young.
To incorporate more flavours into popcorn, he started trying out different flavours and have done many taste tests. It went on until he had an ‘EUREKA’ moment during a casual trip to the cinema where he smelled the overwhelming aroma of Nasi Lemak, which sparked the idea of incorporating local flavours into gourmet popcorn.
At-present, The Kettle Gourmet has 4 local flavours which are: Chilli Crab, Chicken Floss, Kaya Butter Toast, and Nasi Lemak flavour.
Challenges Faced
In the interview, Zac has broken down the challenges faced into 3Ps: People, Product and Process, and recognised that ‘people’ was the most difficult for him as a business owner.
People:
Not only does Zac have to hire and retain the right people, but he also has to liaise with suitable distributors and suppliers. He started years ago as a one-man-show, and is currently leading a team of 21 people. Through this leadership, he realised that the approach to hiring the right people is to look for like-minded individuals with genuine passion instead of qualifications.
Product:
The product has to keep adapting to customers’ preferences. Understanding that customers are more health conscious nowadays, The Kettle Gourmet’s popcorn are made using quality ingredients that are trans fat free and non-GMO, with no artificial flavourings.
Process:
With high competition in the industry, he has to constantly innovate and come up with new flavours of popcorn that customers will enjoy. Accompanied by the constant efforts put into R&D, The Kettle Gourmet is the only local popcorn brand that carries unique asian flavours.
Best Decision made for The Kettle Gourmet
Instead of opening physical popcorn shops, The Kettle Gourmet started off with a completely digital approach, whereby customers can purchase our popcorn directly from our website. Looking back, this was one of the best decisions Zac made for The Kettle Gourmet. While many businesses were struggling to survive through the pandemic, we managed to leverage on our digital advantage and achieved a revenue increase of 247%.
The Kettle Gourmet
The Kettle Gourmet aims to provide customers with fun and unique experiences with different flavours of popcorn that customers will never get bored of. We promise freshly baked popcorns with only the highest quality ingredients.
It features the classic flavours like Chocolate and Salted Caramel popcorn, as well as local favourites consisting of Nasi Lemak, Chilli Crab, Chicken Floss and Kaya Butter Toast.
The Kettle Gourmet popcorn packs come in two different sizes, a family pack (330g) which is suitable for sharing, and a smaller pack (65g).
They understand that with so many different flavours, customers will be spoilt for choices. Fret not, they have specially curated the Assorted Singles Bundle for customers to try out all of our flavours in a smaller pack and provide free delivery with a minimum order of $50.