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062SMU

JUMBO GROUP: TRANSFORMATION RECIPE FOR BUILDING

AND SCALING A SMART F&B BUSINESS

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The ultimate goal of digitalisation is to help create more AI-enabled personalised customer
experiences.
- Ang Kiam Meng, Group CEO and Executive Director, JUMBO Group Limited

It was the middle of October 2022. JUMBO Group CEO and Executive Director Ang Kiam Meng
had just returned to Singapore from Hanoi after witnessing the opening of JUMBO Seafood’s fourth
restaurant in Vietnam. That made it JUMBO’s 42nd outlet across the entire Group, which had a

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presence across Northeast and Southeast Asia. The Group had come a long way from its humble
beginnings, when its first outlet at Singapore’s East Coast Seafood Centre was located in a less-than-
ideal unit, which patrons could only reach after walking past a host of other restaurants whose touts
would try to lure them away. It also did not help that there was a fence then between the restaurant
and East Coast Lagoon, which further curtailed access to the outlet.

Ang, who had joined the family business in 1993, was heartened that the Group had emerged stronger
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from the COVID-19 pandemic, even though it had not yet fully recovered from the S$20 million
(US$14.7 million1) loss it had incurred over the first two years of the pandemic. Takings at that time
in Singapore, the Group’s largest market, had been battered from the dining restrictions imposed by
the government. Travel restrictions had further prevented tourists, particularly from China, its main
clientele before the pandemic, from coming to Singapore to enjoy its world-famous chilli crab.

To survive, JUMBO Group decided to introduce other dining concepts which could get around the
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small-group dining restriction that was in place for several months prior to the reopening of
Singapore’s economy in mid-2022. It also expanded revenue avenues by acquiring other local brands,
entering the premium dining market segment, developing new retail offerings, and exploring more
overseas markets. In addition, Ang intensified its digitalisation efforts by further improving its
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, to prepare the company for future growth after the
pandemic.
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JUMBO’s strategy seemed to be the ‘right transformation recipe’, as it reported a global revenue
growth of 9.2 percent, from S$45.4 million (US$33.3 million) for the first half of 2021 to S$49.6
million (US$36.4 million) in the first half of 2022. Its revenue in Singapore over the corresponding
period grew by 14.3 percent to S$30 million (US$22 million). Now that the pandemic restrictions
had been lifted, what was the next step? Should JUMBO continue with the strategies formulated
during the pandemic, or was it time to contemplate fresh ones?

1
US$1 = S$1.36 as at September 2023.
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This case was written by Associate Professor Geng Xuesong, Andrew Chin and Thomas Lim at the Singapore Management
University. The case was prepared solely to provide material for class discussion. The authors do not intend to illustrate either
effective or ineffective handling of a managerial situation. The authors may have disguised certain names and other identifying
information to protect confidentiality.

Copyright © 2023, Singapore Management University Version: 2023-11-09

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 SMU-23-0015 JUMBO’s Digital Transformation Recipe

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From JUMBO Seafood to JUMBO Group

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The JUMBO Seafood restaurant was founded in 1987 by Ang’s father, Ang Hon Nam, and nine
friends, following their passion “for the love of eating and seafood”. The restaurant nearly went bust
during its first two years. Ang recalled, “We had no experience and relied on a manager and chef to
manage the business. There was a mismatch of expectations on how the kitchen should be run.”2

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JUMBO Seafood got its first big break when it took part in a campaign organised by the then
Singapore Tourism Promotion Board to promote its best-known dish, chilli crab. 3 JUMBO
Seafood’s price point and positioning primarily targeted tourists and large family gatherings.
Interestingly, the fact that it charged locals and tourists the same price for its food further boosted its
popularity, and this transparent pricing policy soon became the norm in Singapore. 4 JUMBO
Seafood became renowned for its Singapore chilli crabs – a must-try item for tourists from around
the world. By 2008, the company had opened and operated five more outlets in Singapore.

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Along with locations and a focus on customer service, the basic recipe for running a good seafood
restaurant was access and usage of high-quality fresh ingredients. In alignment with its mission “to
provide quality food and services at great value in a comfortable and friendly environment”, JUMBO
Seafood had developed an in-house 5S system to practise strict housekeeping and ensure the quality
of its seafood. This 5S system – referring to ‘sort, systemise, shine, standardise, and self-discipline’
– was derived from a Japanese concept that untidy, cluttered work areas were not productive. In
addition, JUMBO’s most critical branding factor was the secret and unique sauce (which was infused
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with more than 10 spices) it used for its chilli crab, which ‘brought in the flavour of Singapore’.

Considering the limited size of the Singapore market, as early as 1995, the company made its first
overseas foray into Surabaya, Indonesia, when an Indonesian customer offered to be a partner in
Indonesia after a satisfying dining experience at the JUMBO Seafood outlet in Singapore. JUMBO
seized this opportunity by opening its first two overseas outlets and sending seven experienced
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Singaporean staff to Indonesia to make JUMBO’s signature sauce. However, JUMBO soon realised
that JUMBO Indonesia’s business model was unsustainable and decided to close the outlets, ending
its first internationalisation attempt after about a year. Ang explained,

The consistency of food quality and training were not there, and we spent a lot of money to try
to get things right… We sent a big team over because we didn’t have a central kitchen yet, so all
the sauces and everything had to be made from scratch there. But cost-wise, this didn’t make
sense as we were paying very high salaries to the Singaporean staff, compared to what we were
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paying the Indonesian staff. Plus, our Indonesian partner wasn’t very experienced, so we didn’t
receive very good advice when entering the market.

Ang realised the challenges of scaling the business to a medium-sized organisation, as “the skillset
in the organisation and the knowledge that we had were not good enough to propel us further to be
an international player” 5 . He also realised that JUMBO needed an internationalisation strategy.
Through learning by doing, Ang and his team therefore developed the basic principles for

Nabilah Said and Kenneth Goh, “Singapore’s Seafood Restaurants Spill the Beans on Their Longevity”, The Straits Times, January
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25, 2015, https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/food/singapores-seafood-restaurants-spill-the-beans-on-their-longevity, accessed March

2023.
3
BrandzAsia, “JUMBO Seafood: Singapore’s Iconic Delicacy to the World”, https://brandzasia.com/jumbo-seafood-singapores-iconic-
delicacy-to-the-world/, accessed November 2022.
4
Nabilah Said and Kenneth Goh, “Singapore's Seafood Restaurants Spill the Beans on Their Longevity”, The Straits Times, January 25,
2015, https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/food/singapores-seafood-restaurants-spill-the-beans-on-their-longevity, accessed November
2022.
5
EY, “Case Study: How JUMBO Seafood is Paving the Way to International Growth”, https://www.ey.com/en_sg/growth/how-jumbo-
seafood-is-paving-the-way-to-international-growth, accessed August 2023.

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internationalisation: JUMBO would operate its own outlets in countries where Mandarin or English
was spoken and where the team possessed a good knowledge of that specific food and beverage

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(F&B) market. In instances where they lacked the language skills or local market knowledge, they
would prefer to work with a qualified local partner on a franchise model.

Ang also established a few key criteria when choosing franchisees. The first was their financial
standing, which was important because unlike a fast-food business, running seafood restaurants
required high capital outlay as the capital expenditure was considerable. The second was experience

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in running an F&B business, as the learning curve would then not be so steep. And finally, Ang also
wanted evidence from the potential franchisee that it would dedicate its resources to expand the
business further. JUMBO deliberately made the franchising fee higher than average to ensure only
committed partners would apply. To ensure that JUMBO’s franchisees were managing their outlets
properly, the Group conducted quarterly audits based on a comprehensive checklist. Counselling and
advice were provided to improve those who underperformed, and those who still did not perform had
their contracts terminated.

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Growth and Expansion Follow

Ang made up his mind to set up a central kitchen in Singapore to standardise the manufacturing of
its “strategically important ingredients” and sauces consistently and at scale. This would mitigate the
challenge of deploying high-cost Singapore-based experienced staff overseas and also address the
variances by individual chefs who might prefer the sauces to be sweeter or spicier. Hence, in 2008,
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JUMBO set up a 10,000-square-feet central kitchen in Singapore. Ang shared,

Having a central kitchen was a critical success factor for ensuring the consistency of its flavours,
and enabling the company to expand overseas via self-managed and franchised outlets so that
diners can savour the authentic taste of JUMBO Seafood from any part of the world. 6

JUMBO engaged a food technology consultant to ensure that its famed dish, chilli crab, could be
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consistently replicated in its overseas outlets “without losing its flavour and texture”.7 In addition,
its research and development kitchen facilitated culinary innovations to improve food preparation
processes and meet the changing demands of different customer segments. Ang added, “We can
consistently replicate the taste of our dishes rapidly. We have also standardised and simplified
cooking procedures so that a junior chef can cook as well as a senior chef.”8

Once the central kitchen was established, the Group decided to venture abroad once again, this time
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into China. Having learnt from its mistakes, it was far more cautious and made extensive preparations.
The Group did a thorough market survey for close to nine months. Ang and his team physically
visited China to try its food and better understand the competitive landscape there. A local consultant
was engaged to conduct focus group sessions to taste its food.

In November 2013, JUMBO Group partnered with another Singapore F&B company, BreadTalk
Group, to open its first restaurant in China at Shanghai’s IAPM Mall, located in Huaihai Middle
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6
Sheila Chiang, “Since 1987: How This 2nd-Gen Owner Grew JUMBO Group with Overseas Expansion and a S$40M IPO”, Vulcan
Post, December 2, 2020, https://vulcanpost.com/724474/jumbo-seafood-group-singapore/, accessed August 2023.
7
Ibid.
8
Nabilah Said and Kenneth Goh, “Singapore’s Seafood Restaurants Spill the Beans on Their Longevity”, The Straits Times, January
25, 2015, https://www.straitstimes.com/lifestyle/food/singapores-seafood-restaurants-spill-the-beans-on-their-longevity, accessed March
2023.

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Road, a shopping district that was popular with tourists. The BreadTalk Group had entered the
Chinese market successfully much earlier and was therefore more familiar with it.9

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This was followed by the setting up of more outlets across China, Taiwan, Korea, Thailand, and
Vietnam. In 2015, JUMBO Group went public in Singapore.
By 2022, JUMBO Group had become one of Singapore’s leading multi-dining concept F&B groups,
with a portfolio of 10 dining concepts offering seafood, wonton noodles (noodles with barbecued
pork and bite-sized pork dumplings, which could either be served dry or in soup), chicken rice and

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so on (refer to Exhibit 1 for a description of these brands). Additionally, it was a franchisee for Hong
Kong-based Tsui Wah cha chaan teng (Hong Kong-style diner) outlets in Singapore, and co-owned
the Singapore Seafood Republic brand with three other restaurants from the city-state (refer to
Exhibit 2 for the Group’s key milestones over the years).

In total, JUMBO Group had 42 outlets spread across 12 Asian cities – Shanghai, Beijing, Xi’an,
Fuzhou, Xiamen, Seoul, Taipei, Ho Chi Minh City, Hanoi, Bangkok, Tokyo, and Phnom Penh – in

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addition to its home market of Singapore (refer to Exhibit 3).

Leadership and Culture

The philosophy, vision, and aspirations of the founders had profoundly shaped the culture of the
Group. Their passion for food had given rise to the company’s fundamental values of “Bonding
People through Food”. JUMBO aimed to offer not only exceptional dishes and service for diners, but
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also cultivate a sense of family culture among its employees. It was not uncommon to spot Ang
wearing a JUMBO service staff uniform and joining his staff to serve customers at times of staff
shortages.

JUMBO was also proud of being a key player in conserving the local food culture. “I am a fervent
lover of local hawker food and I strongly believe Singapore has a unique food culture which should
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be conserved and propagated,” said Ang. With more and more hawker stalls shuttering due to the old
age of the hawkers and a lack of successors, Ang believed JUMBO needed to play its part to preserve
and promote Singapore’s heritage flavours and dishes.10 This aspiration was consistently reflected
in the company’s consideration of acquisition targets.

In addition, Ang was known for his constant pursuit of productivity and improving operational
efficiency. Embracing cutting-edge technology, and adopting information technology (IT) systems
and digital productivity tools had therefore evolved into a pivotal aspect of JUMBO’s culture, a
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noteworthy distinction from many other players within the traditional F&B sector.

Digital Transformation in JUMBO Group

Ang held a computer science degree from the University of Texas at Austin, and started digitalising
the Group’s operations soon after he joined the family business in 1993.
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Restaurants were typically labour-intensive and traditionally relied heavily on paper-based

operations. For example, to fulfil an order for even a glass of water required considerable paper
coordination across different units in a restaurant. The order taker would pass the order to the kitchen

9
Sheila Chiang, “Since 1987: How This 2nd-Gen Owner Grew JUMBO Group with Overseas Expansion and a S$40M IPO”, Vulcan
Post, December 2, 2020, https://vulcanpost.com/724474/jumbo-seafood-group-singapore/, accessed January 2023.
10
Eunice Quek, “Jumbo Group to Acquire Kok Kee Wanton Noodle for $2.1m”, The Straits Times, November 27, 2020,
https://www.straitstimes.com/life/food/jumbo-group-to-acquire-kok-kee-wanton-noodle-for-21m, accessed August 2023.

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manager, who would appoint a staff to check the inventory and prepare the water. Subsequently, a
waiter would take the water from the kitchen and serve it to the guest. The order fulfilment

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information would then be recorded by the order taker, who would inform the cashier so that the
payment could be received.

Order takers thus had to move around several units for them to register the order. Multiple data entries
were necessary (such as on the guest order and on the payment system), all through manual input.
This made the process error-prone. For example, the order taker may submit the order slip to the

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cashier but forget to pass it to the kitchen, making the guests wait a long time for their food.
Substantial effort was wasted in correcting these unproductive mistakes. A solution was to make the
process paperless, enabling seamless information flow across units. Ang’s early project to use PDAs
(personal digital assistants 11 ) for order taking was initiated with this objective in mind. In fact,
JUMBO was one of the first Chinese restaurants in Singapore to use PDAs to manage the placement
of food orders and launch an online customer loyalty programme. 12 Ang also automated the
restaurant’s payroll function, and it became the first F&B business in Singapore to implement a fully

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integrated point of sales (POS) system.

Besides order taking, the monitoring and control of the back end (e.g., kitchen and procurement) was
also difficult with the traditional paper-based approach. For a seafood restaurant chain like JUMBO,
fresh seafood could account for about half the cost of operations. Yet it was almost impossible to
calculate the average price of some of these stock-keeping units (SKUs), as there were multiple
suppliers every day, and most would simply hand over an Excel sheet of items printed on a sheet of
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paper. If too much seafood was ordered, the excess stock would not be used and would have to be
discarded, which made inventory management very challenging. Managers could only spot the
problems (e.g., raw material price increases, too much seafood being discarded, etc.) in the
consolidated report many days after the actual transactions. This meant that attempts at cost control
were based on outdated information.

According to Ang’s plan, an ideal digital system would address these challenges and help to capture
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information accurately in real time so that managers could monitor what was happening and
consequently have a tighter control of the cost of goods and sources of revenues. With every food or
material item captured into the system, it would be easy to extract all the relevant information and
generate business intelligence. For example, examining the daily change in the average price of raw
meat or average size of live crabs would enable immediate recognition of the abnormality, alerting
and enabling the managers to make necessary adjustments.
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Project Management for Implementing New Digital Systems

Buoyed by his initial success implementing of PDAs and the POS system, the CEO who was
nicknamed “System Ang” by his staff on account of the systematic approach he adopted to run
JUMBO, went on to implement an ERP project for the company to further increase operational
efficiency and productivity. Ang also got financial and advisory support from the government agency,
Enterprise Singapore, which was dedicated to facilitating traditional businesses in Singapore to
leverage digital technologies for operational enhancements.
Do

11
A PDA was an electronic handheld organiser which linked up to a personal computer to carry out various functions like managing
calendars and handling documents. It was commonly used in the 1990s and 2000s but had since been supplanted by smartphones.
12
Jumbo Group of Restaurants, “Velocities of Growth: The Singapore 1000 Stories (JUMBO Seafood)”, November 21, 2011,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgElVR0BjMg, accessed November 2022.

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At that time, big data analytics and ERP systems were still not commonplace yet.13 JUMBO had
been quoted astronomical sums for implementing a customised ERP system. As a result, the Group

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decided to select a vendor that seemed to quote a reasonably low figure. Unfortunately, that did not
work out, and for a period of several years, JUMBO struggled with the implementation of its first
ERP system. It had to modify its system flow and set-up considerably to cater to the ERP system, but
this caused problems when the system was applied to other business processes.14 The methodology
used then was not integrative but more piecemeal as it focused on solving problems in parts. A simple
example to illustrate the kind of problems they were facing was in the area of quantity. In one part

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of the system, procurement data showed that x number of cartons had been purchased, but in another
part of the system, the staff had to key in the amount of ingredients used in grams and kilograms,
which entailed the question of conversion. As a result of the data inconsistency (since different parts
of the system were yielding different data), there was also a need to verify which set of data was
accurate. Such problems popped up repeatedly because the system was not sufficiently integrative.

Things eventually came to a head when Ang found that despite the best efforts of his team, the first

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ERP system was a lemon through and through. Ang commented,

The more we tried to fix it, the more errors we introduced. The data was inconsistent, so it was
impossible to generate any useful business intelligence. It was so tiring that in the end, we
decided to abandon it.

Ang decided to start all over again. This time round, he and his team would have to be even more
cautious and rigorous when selecting a new vendor. The optimal choice would be a system that had
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a solid track record. This would not be cheap, but it was a must for systematic transformation. In
2021, the Group appointed German multinational software company SAP SE to help it implement
the second iteration of its ERP system. This time, Ang also paid attention to building a strong in-
house team to work with the vendor and prepare for implementation.

The project took less than nine months to complete, and the early results after implementation were
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encouraging. For instance, the finance department, one of the first beneficiaries of the ERP
implementation, used to struggle with completing month-end closing financial reports on time but
now found that the process was much smoother. In addition, the duration for processes like stock-
taking and inventory reconciliation had shortened significantly from one week to just a day, while
important information such as inventory balance and the expiry date of stocks could now be retrieved
directly from the system. 15 According to SAP Singapore Managing Director Eileen Chua, other
benefits that had materialised included the ability to track procurement journeys and intervene ad hoc
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if necessary, the cutting of revenue losses because of seasonal goods arriving late, and improved
inventory accuracy due to a unified single journal for stock information.16

Ang added,

The use of SAP has also cleared blind spots that were present when we were still using paper.
Previously, staff could sometimes end up ordering materials beyond their authority level. Then
when the goods arrived, we would start asking one another who ordered it and who authorised
the order. But with this new system, we can instruct the supplier that unless it receives an official
Do

purchase order, it need not act on the order. This way, we have better checks and balances.

13
Mike Leaño, “Jumbo-Scale Digitalisation for a Restaurant Chain”, Frontier Enterprise, November 18, 2021, https://www.frontier-
enterprise.com/jumbo-scale-digitalisation-for-a-restaurant-chain/, accessed November 2022.
14
Ibid.
15
Ibid.
16
Ibid.

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 SMU-23-0015 JUMBO’s Digital Transformation Recipe

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Learning from the Implementation

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Reflecting on the outcomes of the two digitalisation efforts, Ang believed that the methodology of
the project management made the difference. Like software development, digitalisation projects
should strictly follow a process model that was made up of four components: analysis, planning,
design, and implementation. Based on his experience, Ang realised that companies had to know the
tasks they needed to complete as well as what software was required to conduct the tasks, and
demonstrate commitment to finishing these tasks.

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First, all digital transformation had to begin with a good analysis of the “jobs to be done”. Any digital
transformation should empower a better service to the customers. “We were lagging behind our goals
of driving customer satisfaction and delighting our customers”, said Ang. 17 The transformation
therefore had to be consumer-centric, as well as alleviate the pain points for customers, and increase
customer satisfaction. This meant that the project team had to spend sufficient time upfront analysing
the pain points and customer needs before moving to the next stage of system design. According to

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Ang, such analytical diagnosis should take at least one third of the total project time. In his experience,
the most challenging part was when the project team exited, and the implementation stage started. If
the project team had not done their analysis and design well before the implementation, the
debugging and troubleshooting process could be very painful (like what they had experienced in their
first trial).

Second, the software needed to meet the business needs. In its first digitalisation experiment, a
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proprietary app had been developed, but the JUMBO staff had found that it took too much time and
resources to develop, maintain, and use the app. Quipped Ang,

I define efficiency by the number of clicks needed. If you have to click 10 times to complete a job,
it’s inefficient, and that was exactly what my staff had to do when they used the app. It’s not user-
friendly at all. How can my staff be productive like that?
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Moreover, in Singapore, many elderly restaurant staff were, in general, not tech-savvy and afraid of
new technology. Hence, for successful digitalisation to take place, the systems implemented had to
be easy for the staff to use – otherwise, they would lack the commitment to try and use them.

Third, the entire organisation, especially top management, needed to be strongly committed to the
project. Digital transformation involved a transformation of mindsets and acceptance of different
ways of doing things, which meant that many people had to get out of their comfort zone. The family-
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like culture in JUMBO and lead-by-example leadership style of Ang had built a solid foundation for
this. Chefs usually do not wish to share their recipes with restaurant owners as the recipes were
considered their unique competencies. However, JUMBO chefs trusted the management and were
willing to share their recipes to contribute to JUMBO’s digitalisation journey. As recipes revealed
the different types and amounts of fresh ingredients needed for different recipes, JUMBO could input
this data into the ERP system to monitor usage and variance to prevent stockout situations and
wastage. This data-driven approach enabled JUMBO to better control its business costs and improve
its operation excellence.
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Modular yet Integrated System

By 2022, JUMBO was in the leading position of digitalisation in the Singapore F&B industry. It had
digitalised its front office operations, including reservation, meal order, table service, customer
17
EY, “Case Study: How JUMBO Seafood is Paving the Way to International Growth”, https://www.ey.com/en_sg/growth/how-jumbo-
seafood-is-paving-the-way-to-international-growth, accessed August 2023.

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payment and feedback collection. Ang believed that digitalising the POS function should be the first
step of digital transformation in a customer-facing business, as it stood at the intersection of other

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key functions and departments. JUMBO had also digitised much of its back-office operations, from
human resources to accounting to finance. The new system enabled the company to work out the
bottom line far more accurately and easily as it captured the procurement, labour, and marketing
costs, along with the revenues. However, to generate useful business intelligence for management’s
decision-making, these modules needed to be better integrated. Ang expected this to happen over
another two to three years. The plan was to create heterogenous, best-of-its-class modular subsystems

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to digitalise various aspects of its operational needs (POS, CRM [Customer Relationship
Management], HR [Human Resource], procurement, finance, etc) and deploy APIs (Application
Programming Interfaces) to integrate all such modular subsystems.

Another key element in the digital system was the data warehouse with data integrity. Accurate data,
especially valuable data like sales and procurement cost, would be key for decision-making. But
building a data warehouse could be challenging and time-consuming as it was essentially a manual

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process in which employees needed to take care and commit to inputting data correctly. Besides, the
system needed to have checkpoints to ensure data integrity.

The ideal digital system would be an integrated system in which all modules were connected to the
data warehouse (refer to Exhibit 4). It was essentially a matrix to connect different players to
different data. All stakeholders, managers, and employees would have access to the data warehouse
for different pieces of information depending on their authority and actual needs. Multiple entries of
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data would be eliminated and any change in data would be reflected in the entire system in real time.
As a case in point, in the past, if guests would like to change their order, the order taker needed to
run to the kitchen to tell the chef to stop cooking and then to the cashier to remove the order from the
bill. Now, the order taker could simply make the change through an app on the mobile phone, and
the chef, kitchen manager, and cashiers were immediately updated. Therefore, the information would
become transparent, and transactions would become traceable.
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Returns on Investment for Digital Transformation

Ang observed that organisations hesitated to initiate digital transformation because it was capital-
intensive, and the outcome could be intangible. The benefit, he believed, might primarily stem from
the fact that digitalisation could enable a better understanding of customer needs, better business
intelligence of cost control, and therefore better decision-making. As such, it was more of an
investment in the capability for the future. For example, the system was able to inform the
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management how effective their promotion (i.e., click-through rate) was and whether they should
continue. It could streamline the operations by predicting the consumer demand well, enabling
minimal wastage of resources while also capturing business opportunities. The HR function could
enable the company to plan for the optimal number of part-time employees to supplement the
workforce, which was especially important as there was typically a shortage of service staff in
Singapore. The system also allowed relevant employees to access critical information through their
mobile phones anywhere, anytime and make decisions without delay.
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Nevertheless, businesses needed to be pragmatic about digital transformation and stop at the point
when diminishing returns happen. As Ang explained, if it became increasingly difficult and costly to
improve another one percent in productivity or reduce another percentage point in outcome variance,
it might be time to stop.

Initially, Ang was hoping to have one system that could do everything – but he came to realise that
some subsystems were not as mature or cost-effective as others. In addition, forcing everyone to get

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onto the system was also quite difficult. Therefore, he gave up that idea and instead moved to design
the system in a modular but open-ended way so that later subsystems could be integrated via APIs.

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Transformation during the COVID-19 Crisis

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, JUMBO’s business boomed, with 80 percent of its income from
tourists, especially those coming from mainland China.18 But the pandemic-induced drop in the

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global travel market had seriously affected its business with a drastic 36.5-percent fall in its revenue
from S$153.6 million (US$113 million) in financial year 2019 (FY2019) to S$97.6 million (US$71.7
million) in the financial year 2020 (FY2020). It then suffered a further 16.2-percent contraction in
its revenue from S$97.6 million (US$71.7 million) in FY2020 to S$81.8 million (US$60.1 million)
in the financial year 2021 (FY2021). It consequently incurred a higher net loss of S$11.2 million
(US$8.2 million) in FY2021, up from S$9.9 million (US$7.3 million) in FY2020 (refer to Exhibit
5). Comparing its results for FY2020 and FY2019, JUMBO Group stomached a huge 190.9-percent

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decline in its profit. The cumulative loss for JUMBO Group in FY2020 and FY2021 was over S$21
million (US$15.3 million). This was mainly due to a repeated cycle of no dine-in and two-diner-limit
owing to flare-ups of the COVID-19 pandemic in Singapore, the Group’s largest market. The
situation was further exacerbated by travel restrictions and the prevailing work-from-home
arrangements in the city-state.

Ang worked swiftly with his team to develop and implement an emergency plan to stem the mounting
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losses. JUMBO cut salaries by between 10 percent and 40 percent, depending on the staff level. For
example, ground staff experienced the lowest reductions at 10 percent, while senior employees like
Ang saw a 40-percent reduction in their pay. JUMBO benefited by retaining all its loyal and
experienced staff, and in fact, reinstated full salaries for employees after nine months while assuring
them of their livelihoods to resolve the low staff morale.19 JUMBO consequently went on to be
recognised by Singapore’s national newspaper, The Straits Times, as one of Singapore’s Top 20 Best
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Employers 2021, the first among the restaurants in Singapore.

Additionally, several other measures were taken. Ang recalled, “We had to re-channel our existing
resources, enhance our operational competencies and leverage our strong brand equity to address the
untapped local market via newer concepts that are more appealing under such an operating
environment.”

Realising its over-dependence on tourist markets, JUMBO started to further diversify its revenue
No

base by working around the pandemic-related constraints to launch a “HACK IT” virtual F&B brand
on December 3, 2020. “HACK IT” targeted “stay-at-home, small families, and younger audience”
with high-quality and affordable “seafood in a bag” meal delivery. Each order came with a table
sheet, aprons, and hand gloves to let customers enjoy the seafood dishes in the comfort of their homes
or offices with easy after-meal clean-up. Ang rated “HACK IT” as doing “very well”, with sales
hitting about S$300,000 (US$222,265) a month – a figure that apparently even dine-in restaurants
might be hard-pressed to hit.20
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Growth Once Again

18
Mandy How, “Grappling with S$20 Million Net Loss in 2 Years, Jumbo Group is Rewiring Consumers to Eat Chinese-Style Seafood
in Pairs”, Mothership, November 27, 2021, https://mothership.sg/2021/11/jumbo-group-interview/, accessed August 2023.
19
Ibid.
20
Eunice Quek, “Jumbo Group to Acquire Kok Kee Wanton Noodle for $2.1m”, The Straits Times, November 27, 2020,
https://www.straitstimes.com/life/food/jumbo-group-to-acquire-kok-kee-wanton-noodle-for-21m, accessed August 2023.

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 SMU-23-0015 JUMBO’s Digital Transformation Recipe

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Amidst the pandemic, JUMBO entered the mass market with affordable hawker concepts, featuring
dishes like wonton noodles and mee pok (flat yellow noodles with fishballs or minced pork that came

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with either a dry or soup option). On November 26, 2020, JUMBO announced its proposed
acquisition of a 75-percent stake in Kok Kee Wonton Noodle for S$2.1 million (US$1.5 million) in
cash and shares.21 On January 24, 2021, it announced a 60-percent-owned joint venture company
with The Art of Mee Pok Pte Ltd, where The Art of Mee Pok would run outlets selling Teochew
fishball and minced meat noodles under the “Lau Lim Mee Pok” trademark. 22 JUMBO’s deep
expertise in digitalisation was leveraged to improve the operational efficiency of these acquired

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brands.

By 2021, JUMBO opened another two seafood outlets in China, and several more in Vietnam,
Thailand, and South Korea in 2022, targeting similar consumer groups in the high-end fine-dining
markets.

Meanwhile, in June 2021, in an effort to streamline its retail offerings of items such as sauces and

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condiments, the Group launched its rebranded retail arm as an omnichannel brand, “Love, Afare”,
where customers could buy these products online, as well as offline at JUMBO outlets. Other than
sauces and condiments which would enable patrons to prepare dishes like JUMBO’s signature chilli
crab dish in the comfort of their own homes, the range also included snacks like chilli crab sticks,
teas such as Ginseng Oolong, and merchandise such as bags, aprons, and cutlery sets. “Love, Afare”
products were not only sold at JUMBO’s full-service outlets, which served more than 6,000
customers daily in Singapore, but also at Sheng Siong, one of the major supermarket chains in the
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city-state. JUMBO also planned to have them distributed at other supermarket chains. Commented
Ang,

“Love, Afare” expands the Group’s reach beyond the brick-and-mortar restaurant setting,
allowing a wider audience, both local and international, to experience and enjoy JUMBO’s
creations.
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In January 2022, JUMBO launched its new premium dining concept, JUMBO Signatures, at The
Shoppes at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore. It elevated the Singapore-style seafood dining experience
through tasting menus and sommelier wine pairing, while its menu showcased culinary excellence in
Singapore’s iconic flavours from the multiple concepts of the Group, mastered over more than 30
years.

Seven months later, JUMBO ventured into the live entertainment segment with the opening of Sui
No

Yi Gastrobar. Other than offering the usual bar bites, the outlet offered mains like fried and claypot
rice. There were also private karaoke rooms that patrons could use for as long as they pleased during
operating hours, and alcohol options such as Martell VSOP and Moët & Chandon Brut Impérial. Ang
explained that the introduction of this concept was an attempt to shore up the Group’s alcohol sales,
which has been significantly lagging behind its seafood sales.
JUMBO’s strategy seemed to work well. It reported a revenue growth in Singapore of 14.3 percent
or S$3.8 million (US$2.8 million) from S$26.3 million (US$19.3 million) in the first half (1H) of
2021 to S$30 million (US$22 million) in 1H2022, with the Kok Kee Wonton Noodle brand
contributing an increase of S$2.1 million (US$1.5 million) in revenue from 1H2021. Its overseas
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operation was doing well too, and revenue from China had increased by 11.7 percent or S$1.8 million
(US$1.3 million) to S$16.9 million in 1H2022 from S$15.1 million (US$11.1 million) in 1H2021.

21
Ibid.
22
Claudia Tan, “Jumbo Unit Inks Joint Venture to Sell Teochew Fishball and Minced Meat Noodles”, The Straits Times, January 24,
2022, https://www.straitstimes.com/business/companies-markets/jumbo-unit-inks-joint-venture-to-sell-teochew-fishball-and-minced-
meat, accessed August 2023.

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 SMU-23-0015 JUMBO’s Digital Transformation Recipe

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The new JUMBO Seafood outlet at Universal Beijing Resort contributed an additional S$2.3 million
(US$1.7 million) in revenue in 1H2022.

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The Recipe for a Bigger, Better JUMBO Group

As Ang looked back at how JUMBO Group had grown, he was filled with immense pride that with

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the support of his team members, many of whom had been working for the Group for decades, they
had together managed to take the Group to where it was now. Nevertheless, it would not do to rest
on its laurels. While the world was gradually emerging from the grip of the pandemic, there were
still considerable economic and political uncertainties.

However, the Group had already adopted several strategies to work its way around some of the main
issues plaguing its business. For one, its choice to better use data collected through the new ERP
system had given it a stronger footing to devise how to run its business more optimally. Additionally,

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it had decided to diversify beyond its staple seafood business to other types of F&B businesses. All
these seemed to lay a good foundation for JUMBO to pursue its vision of becoming “the leading
innovative F&B group advocating Singapore food culture”.

But Ang believed that it would still take several years for the ERP system to fully yield its long-term
benefits. Could the Group truly leverage the system to create data-driven businesses and scale its
business even further? Ultimately, Ang believed, JUMBO would become a smart business. Could it
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eventually deploy new digital technologies (e.g., blockchains) to improve efficiency at its outlets and
central kitchen operations that would be smart enough to adjust according to different scenarios?
Could it perhaps leverage Artificial Intelligence (AI) to help create more personalised JUMBO
customer experiences? For example, the system could identify customers when they enter the
restaurant using facial recognition technology and then prepare their preferred drinks even before
they order. In addition, how could digital assets and skills enable JUMBO to expand internationally
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even further? Might it even be able to monetise its investment in the system and create spin-offs,
perhaps in a tech-related field? The possibilities seemed endless.
No
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 SMU-23-0015 JUMBO’s Digital Transformation Recipe

EXHIBIT 1: DESCRIPTION OF JUMBO GROUP’S F&B BRANDS

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Brand Description

JUMBO Seafood The original and most prominent brand of the Group famous for
its chilli crab dish

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JUMBO Signatures The Group’s flagship premium dining concept offered the
quintessential taste of Singaporean cuisine through intricate
tasting menus and sommelier wine pairing

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JUMBO Kitchen A casual seafood dining concept

HACK IT A virtual dining concept that offered affordable Seafood-in-a-

Pack delivery
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Ng Ah Sio Bak Kut Teh A heritage brand that served heart-warmingly aromatic soup with
tender, juicy pork ribs cooked in the distinctive Teochew style
since 1955

Zui Teochew Cuisine A brand offering classic Teochew dishes (there are two sub-
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brands: Chui Huay Lim Teochew Cuisine and Zui Yu Xuan

Teochew Cuisine)

Chao Ting Pao Fan A sister brand to Zui Teochew Cuisine that specialised in
Teochew Pao Fan (rice served in broth)
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Kok Kee Wonton Noodle Established in 1985, it served authentic Singapore wonton
noodles and was famous for its springy noodles mixed in a special
secret sauce.

Sui Yi Gastrobar An all-in-one dining and entertainment concept with live

music, large-group karaoke rooms, and modern Asian fare
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Xinyao Hainanese Chicken A concept offering a Singapore classic – chicken rice Hainanese-
Rice style (poached chicken with rice cooked in chicken fat, served
with chilli sauce and a cucumber garnish)

Source: JUMBO Group

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 SMU-23-0015 JUMBO’s Digital Transformation Recipe

EXHIBIT 2: JUMBO GROUP’S KEY MILESTONES

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Source: JUMBO Group

EXHIBIT 3A: JUMBO GROUP BRANDS BY TYPE

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Casual
Dining
(8%)

Full-
No

Service
Fast (50%)
Casual
(42%)
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 SMU-23-0015 JUMBO’s Digital Transformation Recipe

EXHIBIT 3B: JUMBO GROUP OUTLETS BY LOCATION

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Source: Authors’ own
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EXHIBIT 4A: INFORMATION FLOW IN TRADITIONALLY-RUN RESTAURANTS
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No

EXHIBIT 4B: INFORMATION FLOW IN DIGITALISED RESTAURANTS

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 SMU-23-0015 JUMBO’s Digital Transformation Recipe

EXHIBIT 4C: DIFFERENT LEVELS OF AUTHORITY AND

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DEGREES OF ACCESS TO INFORMATION IN DIGITALISED RESTAURANTS

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Source: Authors’ own

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EXHIBIT 5: JUMBO GROUP’S FINANCIAL HIGHLIGHTS
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No

Source: JUMBO Group

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