For food, for us, and creating restaurants and spaces, I feel there is a human element to it and I feel for us, we have an open kitchen as well because you need to see the human, you need to see the person making the food, and then you can see the value in it.

You can also understand that these spaces are important to have, to connect and have this human connection and just being able to see the person making the food and cooking it and bringing it to you. Even with AI and bots, I don’t think we can remove the human element in it.

The mentorship part, it goes back to both parties having to want to receive and also give information. This is how we evolve and how we grow and how we get better. When we have this mentorship, we find somebody or find a place that we want.

I always want to work for places and people that I want to aspire to be like. So this is how my career path has been. I always look for places that I want to work for and people that I look up to, that I want to be like.

For me, I’m absorbing everything. And this is something nobody can take away from me. And it’s value for myself that I can maybe share to other people. So I think that’s really important to be able to have this knowledge.

For me and for our team, success is everybody has a job and everybody is happy to work together. But also we can sustain a lifestyle people who are in F&B because it is a really tough career and it may not have gotten the prestige as other careers.

And for me to be able to provide my team with a job, skill set and be able to pay people according to how times are. I think that shows that we’ve done a good job and that people want to come and work for us and also stay with us, while also creating growth opportunities for them too.

Whether it’s through mentorships or experience overseas. If I have a cook who really wants to learn Japanese cuisine, we can also go over to a chef that does Japanese and have a few days with them.

Success is when people around me get better and are better than how I am. If I’m teaching people and people get better than me, that’s the biggest compliment.

You never want somebody to be below you. You always want to move people forward.

In Singapore, F&B is a small scene where everybody knows everybody. Most people are willing to share and ask for help. It’s a really important collective.

It’s really up to the individual. If they want to learn more, how they want to learn or how they want to progress, they need to also initiate that and then we can support. I’m a big fan of helping our team, giving them tools that they need to succeed not only here, but also beyond here.

It’s also up to the individual and how they do that. Everybody has their own personal goals. Along the way, we just try to support them where we can and help them grow.