Burnt Ends: How poor time and location trapped Monan Pork in a niche
Revisiting one of Singapore's former hawker stars and how wider factors beyond their control derailed the business.
📌 Burnt Ends is a series that dives into F&B business failures and examines the causes behind them. Monan Pork: how bad timing and location proved too much for a winning recipe
45‑year‑old Liew Chuk Kee wasn’t your average hawker.
A seasoned F&B veteran, he built franchise empires for established Asian brands like BreadTalk and Bake Cheese Tarts. At the height of his corporate career, he oversaw operations at hundreds of stores worldwide.
He recalled, “I had felt like some sort of hybrid, going from a very high‑level perspective of the industry to what had felt like the lowest rung of the value chain.” If franchise operations had been a neat playbook that he simply needed to follow, being a hawker meant rewriting it from scratch.
But why enter a trying industry when he was already cruising smoothly? Chuk reckoned it had been partly an act of self‑actualization—having had the privilege to chase his entrepreneurial dreams and the ability to act on them. His wife’s encouragement had also sealed the deal.
In December 2019, he finally took the leap of faith. Fresh from the National Environment Agency’s Hawker Incubation Stall Program, Monan Pork Soup welcomed its first customers at Singapore’s Chinatown Complex Food Center and, within just six months, caught the attention of Singapore’s leading food bloggers.
The centerpiece of Monan’s menu was its signature pork soup—a local spin on classic Vietnamese pork broth, complete with unique offerings like egg sausage (which, by Chuk’s account, evoked comparisons to Hakka and Thai culinary heritage) and thick‑cut meat cakes. It was not quite your usual pig‑organ soup; it was a blend of regional flavors familiar to the Singaporean palate, all for an economical S$3.80.
But the good times didn’t last. The initial momentum generated by media mentions vaporized when COVID‑19 circuit‑breaker measures hit Singapore in 2020. Chuk recalled having to shutter the stall “every two to three months,” which destabilized his nascent customer base. Even after the pandemic subsided, foot traffic in Singapore’s Chinatown district languished far below post‑COVID levels. Labor costs and high rent—persistent ills in Singapore’s F&B industry—dealt the final blows.
For Chuk, Monan Pork’s story ended on a bittersweet note. The business did not turn out the way he had expected, but he’s satisfied that customers still remember the product fondly. At the time of writing, the stall held a 4.8‑out‑of‑5 rating across 175 Google Reviews.
Here is how Monan Pork rose so quickly—and the larger reasons for its eventual demise.
What worked well
Chuk believes in leaving nothing to chance. In corporate F&B, he saw the importance of personally reviewing the entire process. “I’ve been through every step: store design, operations, staff training, process documentation … those experiences shaped the way I ran Monan,” he explained.
Everything about Monan was about clarity. He conducted a landscape analysis to identify market gaps, timed procurement perfectly for succulent pork cuts, designed pre‑packed mixes to scale production with demand, and kept preparation steps well defined and minimal.
To ensure consistency, Chuk deliberately limited his menu to six or seven pork‑related dishes. Each configuration could be prepared quickly using the same ingredients. All components were made in‑house, with meat cakes and pork cooked only upon order.
Monan’s simplicity belied an unrelenting commitment to perfection. Unconvinced that the broth required eight hours, Chuk and his wife devised a compression‑cooking technique that delivered the same mouthwatering results in just two hours. He took hundreds of photos to get each sample shot right.
Every aspect of Monan’s signature pork soup—timing, texture, consistency—underwent rigorous blind tasting. “My sample size for the blind tests was about 400, including existing F&B operators,” he said. He had learned from his time running franchise operations for Bake Cheese Tarts that an 80 % approval rate would have signaled success—Monan’s pork soup had scored 90%.
Chuk added that there was a need to get assurance from his consumers before he actually started selling, even for add‑ons. “If you don’t do preliminary testing first, you end up compromising the consumer experience,” he warned.
What didn’t work
Despite Chuk’s comprehensive SOPs and market testing, Monan Pork never regained its footing after COVID‑19 struck.
Monan had opened in December 2019, mere months before Singapore’s 2020 circuit‑breaker measures. Chuk recalled having to shutter the stall “every two to three months,” a disruption that destabilized his emerging customer base and squandered the early media buzz. By the time day‑to‑day foot traffic recovered, much of Monan’s momentum had evaporated.
At the same time, Chinatown’s daily patronage remained depressed. Weekday patronage at the tourist-reliant location remained weak for an extended period due to a slump in tourist traffic, and aging facilities also discouraged potential customers.
While the stall location was situated close to an escalator exit - an area with typically high footfall in a multi-story hawker center - Monan Pork was also tucked between established local names like Shanghai Xiao Long Bao and Heng Ji Chicken Rice. Chuk estimates that on most days, Monan attracted only about 10 % of passers-by. Conversion rates languished far below what Monan’s novel concept demanded, and he found himself unable to break out of a niche.
Monan’s second branch at Toa Payoh achieved good returns in its first four months—10 % to 20 % profit on average—though demand eventually tapered off.
“I can make very good food, but the product I’m selling takes time to grow on people. If consumers are slow to try, how long can I really keep this going?”
Chuk attributed this trend to local habits at hawker centers. “Customers only tried something new when they couldn’t get their usual fare on any particular day,” he reflected. For a dish as novel as Monan’s pork soup, customers often knocked only when they had grown tired of their staples. “The vast majority of Singaporeans still stuck to their staples,” he added.
Although Monan broke even most months, rising labor costs and strict regulations made it exceedingly difficult to secure reliable help. On several occasions, new hires left after just a few days.
By March this year, the triple threats of bad timing, a locational disadvantage, and stagnant sales growth proved insurmountable. After five years, the numbers didn’t added up, and Chuk made the hard call to close Monan Pork Soup.
What Chuk would have done differently
Chuk closed this chapter without regret, though he admitted he would not have opened the second outlet so quickly. “For a novel product like what we offered, we should have firmly established a strong customer base first,” he said.
Ultimately, Monan Pork remained a novelty in Singapore’s hawker scene. Chuk aspired to create a new-age Singaporean staple that could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with classics like Hainanese Chicken Rice and Laksa, and reality fell short of his expectations. Time was his greatest obstacle - Monan simply never had the runway to build a strong brand - and a poor location compounded its effects.