This article first appeared in Digital Edge, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on November 15, 2021 - November 21, 2021

Digital transformation, in the face of the disruption caused by the pandemic, does not work for everyone. Take, for example, Christopher de Mello, who runs the popular Mum’s Place restaurant, which will be closing after 20 years.

When he wrote his goodbye post on social media to announce that he was finally closing Mum’s Place, he broke down and wept.

It had taken De Mello a lot to write those words but the toll exacted by almost two years of a pandemic with the on-again, off-again lockdowns, perennial staffing problems as well as the relentless urging of his daughters, both of whom had migrated overseas, had finally settled months of indecision.

The ex-banker, who with his wife, Jennifer, and sister-in-law, Iris, had successfully established a restaurant with signature not-to-be-missed dishes such as the Cencaru Cili Padi Petai and Sotong Lemak Kuning (to say nothing of its special version of otak-otak, four-angled beans sambal and daun keledek with garlic). They had set up systems to ensure that the restaurant, located in Damansara Perdana, Petaling Jaya, ran smoothly and the food always tasted the same and was served quickly.

In fact, Mum’s Place amassed a solid and loyal base of fans in its two decades of operations. De Mello had put up a wall of fame with pictures of celebrities, corporate figures and leaders who had dined there.

He is chockful of stories about people encountering the restaurant’s signature dishes for the first time and reacting very strongly to it. “There was this lady lawyer who didn’t eat fish. Her family and colleagues bet that she would change her mind once she tasted the cencaru, and she was quite confident that she wouldn’t — so confident that the bet ran into thousands of ringgit.”

The lawyer, who was in her mid-30s, lost. “I was unaware of the bet and when I passed by the table, she scolded me, telling me that she loved me and hated me at the same time. She also threatened my life if I should ever stop serving it,” he remembers with a laugh.

Others have come up to him sadly, after the announcement, to thank him for all the years of good eating. “There were some couples who started coming here when they were courting and are now married. For example, one couple now has four children, and the youngest is already nine.”

De Mello is very touched by the outpouring of love and emotion he has received since the announcement. So, why close?

First, when it migrated to a digital platform and prepared dishes for delivery or takeaway, he found that not all dishes travelled well. 

“An example is our Daun Keledek with Garlic, one of our most popular dishes. By the time it arrived at the customer’s place, it would be all soggy and oxidised. There were so many complaints that finally, we took it off the menu,” he says.

“Once we deliver, there is a 20% decrease in quality. Why? Because it’s all compacted in the packaging, the vapour affects the food, the veggies oxidise even if it’s delivered quickly. With hot cooked food, once you cover it and deliver it, it loses 20% to 25% of the dine-in value,” De Mello explains.

Having a menu that accommodated only dishes that travelled well was a problem. Little by little Mum’s Place was losing the essence of what made it special.

De Mello had previously refused to get on delivery platforms mainly because he found their charges exorbitant but, perhaps more importantly, because he felt one had to dine in to properly experience the food.

Naturally, this option was taken away when the first lockdown happened in March last year. Mum’s Place closed down completely for five weeks, confident that the virus would be eliminated and it could reopen.

When that did not happen, it sought other options and signed up with Beepit, a delivery service that charged only 15% (compared to the 30% and 35% charged by the more popular delivery platforms), but this came with its own set of issues.

“Their riders were all outsourced and generally preferred to accept orders for Grab or foodpanda first. So, we would have to wait to see if a rider accepted the order before we could

start preparing the food. By the time the food reached the customer, it would already have been an hour. But even with all that, we’re grateful to Beepit. They saved our lives during the pandemic, when all we were looking to do was break even to pay our bills.”

Staff problems were another headache. “Maybe it’s because 75% of our staff were foreigners. We had to outsource our permits, which cost us RM6,000 per staff, and there’s no guarantee they will stay with you.”

What about employing locals? De Mello chuckled. “I’m not saying locals are bad, but 60% to 70% of them lasted only a few months. Unless you are based in a mall where they can go hang out during their one-hour break, they’re usually not interested.”

He lost a good chunk of his staff last year when there was political trouble in Myanmar and their parents asked them to return home for support. “We were experiencing the [Conditional Movement Control Order] at the time — first, dine-in; then, no dine-in. I let them go back, hoping that our situation here would be sorted by March.”

A civil war broke out in Myanmar, however, and they were not allowed to return to Malaysia. “Now, I have only 10 staff, including me.”

Right now, especially after the announcement, business is booming and De Mello, who was hard-pressed to find time for this interview, has his hands full. 

“Basically, Malaysians like eating out. We know because the moment the rules are relaxed, our business is back to pre-Covid levels,” he says.

Because of this, Mum’s Place did not take as much of a financial hit as some of the other restaurants. “Usually, we do about RM3 million a year. Last year, we managed RM2.1 million, which is not bad, considering we had three to four months of lockdown, when people were not allowed to dine in.”

The main factor that led to this decision, however, was the persistence of his daughters. “We are a very close-knit family and my wife and I haven’t seen our daughters for close to two years. They told me, ‘Dad, it’s time for you to sit back a bit.’ This pandemic helped make up my mind. And I’m already 62. It’s time to take a break.”

When De Mello put up the “goodbye” post on social media, he said he was open to selling the business. The terms of sale was that he and his partners would be exiting the business completely. But they would be prepared to provide two months of solid training on the job.

“We said, send in your team, and we will teach them everything — basically two recipes for every dish — for individual cooking and bulk cooking. We would also teach you all you needed to know about the pastes (cencaru, devil curry, mutton curry, lemak kuning, sambal) and tastes (the different portions of salt, ajinomoto, seasoning cubes, gula melaka for each dish), how much to cook up at one time and store in the cold room, all that.”

However, the people who approached him to buy the restaurant either did not have a team on hand to be sent for training or wanted to tie them down for at least a year. 

De Mello was not having any of it. “The whole point of this exercise is that we would be exiting the business. And there they are, people offering us a lot of money to hang on till at least December next year. And I said, thank you. But no. We are going to exit, immaterial of the outcome of the sale.”

Investment bankers are still calling. “They keep saying, Chris, I got some investors. And I tell them, I don’t want investors. Investors have been coming to see me for the past 10 years. I want buyers.”

So, now, he is looking to sell the recipes, without the Mum’s Place brand name. Some restaurateurs have expressed interest. 

He is sad that the restaurant will not carry on, but perhaps this is a blessing in disguise.

“At the end of the day, it’s all about the soul of the place. The experience that people get when they come to the restaurant; the happiness they get from trying the dishes, how welcome they feel. That can be conveyed only through dine-in experiences. And it needs to be about more than the money.”

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