More than a meal: Successful restaurant groups on how they draw customers back

SINGAPORE – The names Initia Group and Cantera Collective might not be familiar to diners. Yet, these two restaurant groups are behind some of the city’s most successful establishments.

Initia Group’s Korean restaurants, including Drim and Modu Samgyetang, are constantly full. Cantera Collective, the new name for AC Concepts, runs well-regarded establishments such as Kulto and Il Toro. It recently opened Casa Mori, a tie-up with Mod-Sin pioneer Willin Low.

In a city awash with new restaurants, they have built loyal followings. How do they do it?

Initia Group: Cornering the K-restaurant market

The number of turns made by Initia Group’s restaurants would make any restaurant operator’s head spin.

For instance, upscale Korean steakhouse Drim at Mandarin Gallery does four turns on weekdays and five on weekends. That means every one of its 90 seats is occupied by four or five diners each day.

Over at Korean ginseng chicken soup restaurant Modu on the same floor of the mall, the turns are even higher. The 40-seat restaurant, open all day, does seven to eight daily turns. Charcoal chicken restaurant, Song Gye Ok in Telok Ayer Street, is also packed.

The group, with 16 restaurants in Singapore and two in Malaysia, is projecting a revenue of $120 million in 2026.

Diners flock to restaurants that the group’s founder Luke Yi opens. The 51-year-old, who has lived in Singapore since 2007, is on a tear, opening more restaurants here, and in Malaysia and Indonesia.

In 2027, he is making perhaps his most ambitious move – taking his restaurants to South Korea, where he was born.

Data driven

Before he became an entrepreneur, Yi was an IT consultant. His parents emigrated to New Zealand when he was 18 and, after university there, he went to Melbourne to find a job.

In 2007, he was posted here for work and soon realised that Korean restaurants were mostly serving barbecue and bibimbap. He did not have a place he could take his family to and enjoy other kinds of Korean food and the kind of hospitality offered by restaurants in South Korea.

“I thought, I might as well do it,” says the father of two teenagers, who is married to a Singaporean radiologist.

In 2012, without any F&B experience, he opened his first restaurant – Chicken Up in Tanjong Pagar, serving chicken dishes such as dakdoritang, a spicy chicken stew; jjimdak or braised chicken; and fried chicken. Along with it, he introduced Korean drinking culture, serving soju and fruit in hollowed-out watermelons, for instance.

He says: “At that time, I wasn’t thinking about building a group or anything big. I just wanted to recreate the kind of Korean dining experience I missed – good food, good conversations and people hanging out longer than they planned.”

Hours-long queues started forming at the 40-seat restaurant and he took up neighbouring shop spaces. By 2014, the restaurant could seat about 200. “I wasn’t just serving food anymore, I was sharing Korean culture,” he says. “That shifted everything for me.”

He adds that Chicken Up was, at that time, one of few companies that used Facebook and social media for marketing, and it also analysed the data it collected.

“That’s when I realised that restaurants are all about women,” he says. “Men – they come in, they enjoy and they forget about it the next day. But women – they take pictures of the food, they talk about the restaurant, they bring friends, they bring their families.”

So he designed the menu and the plating to appeal to his most important demographic. Within three years, he opened 13 more Chicken Up restaurants. He sold the business in 2018 to focus on hair salons and head spas that, at the time, had a different ambience.

He had opened his first one, Bada, in 2016 at Mandarin Gallery, and now has 10 salons and head spas across Singapore and Malaysia.

It came from his monthly visits in Singapore to what he calls “cookie-cutter” salons, small spaces with no facilities for customers to relax. So, at his salons, including Walking On Sunshine at Orchard Central, there are masses of plants and the service experience includes complimentary drinks and coffee made by in-house baristas.

People, he says, often walk in thinking they are cafes.

The real competition

The food business soon drew him back in.

“When I wanted to go to a barbecue restaurant, I couldn’t go to those in Tanjong Pagar,” he says. “They are mostly for kids. Long queues, noisy. I am getting older and wanted to go somewhere a little more premium with my family or guests. So, I thought, I’ll build one.”

In 2023, he opened two restaurants. One was Drim, which means “sincerely yours” in Korean. He was soon packing them in. It might be the premium beef, the table-top exhaust fans that do not get in the way of conversation, the selection of Korean liquor or the buckwheat noodles made in-house daily from freshly milled buckwheat flour.

The other was Kimchi Dining at Orchard Central, offering different kinds of kimchi and Korean-fusion dishes.

In short order came other restaurants. Drim Gold on Sentosa; Modu at Mandarin Gallery; Modu High in Amoy Street; Tofu G in Mandarin Gallery; Gochu at Orchid Country Club; and Song Gye Ok in Telok Ayer Street and at The Centrepoint.

So far in 2026, he has opened Tofu G at Ngee Ann City, UE Square and Amoy Street; Sam Sam Sam, a wellness-focused samgyetang restaurant at Novena Square; Whuchu in UE Square serving Korean lettuce wraps, charcoal grilled meat and pot rice; Katsu by Kyu in OUE Downtown Gallery, a tonkatsu restaurant showcasing Jeju pork; and Aifokato in Telok Ayer Street, serving affogato inspired by one he had in Florence, Italy.

He started out funding the restaurants himself, but now has investors, which contribute, he says, less than 20 per cent of the funds.

Asked about the competition he is getting from South Korean brands wanting to plant their flag in Singapore, he says: “Our competitors are not other restaurants. Our competitors are Netflix and YouTube. People don’t spend time with people anymore.

“So, when we think of launching a new brand or restaurant, the first thing that comes to my mind is how to bring people out. At home, they can order so easily from Grab. They can cook and there are a lot of meal kits out there. So easy. And there is so much comfort at home.”

He adds: “We need to be a little more, I guess, creative to bring people out. It’s not just about food anymore. People remember great experiences.

“I also always ask myself – is this place going to be worth spending my hard-earned money on? Is this going to be a place that I will bring my immediate family? If the answer to these two questions is no, then we don’t even start. We walk away from that concept, deal or location.”

Next big thing

What comes across during the interview is Yi’s drive. He says his hobbies are going out to eat and thinking of new restaurant concepts.

Early on, he cottoned on to how diners were getting more health-conscious, which led him to open the samgyetang restaurants. The success of Tofu G, which he started in part because he is lactose-intolerant, also taps this healthy living trend.

To keep the entire enterprise humming, he has 500 full-time staff and about 300 part-timers. There is a team of four developing new dishes for the restaurants. It also checks that processes and recipes are followed, and troubleshoots when needed.

He even has a team of 12 mystery shoppers – all South Korean – who eat at the group’s restaurants to check on quality and report back if anything is not up to scratch.

Six or seven times a year, he goes to South Korea to see what is trending there.

In August, he will open a 120-seat Modu High and a Tofu G at Raffles City. An 80-seat Sam Sam Sam opens at Takashimaya in October or November.

In Malaysia, he plans to open another eight Modu restaurants by year-end. Modu TRX in Kuala Lumpur now serves about 1,000 customers a day. Modu will also open in Indonesia in 2026.

Three new brands will also launch later in 2026.

Premium Korean barbecue restaurant Ollim will debut in Telok Ayer Street in late September. At United Square, there will be WooTang, opening in September and serving galbitang or beef short rib soup and galbijjim or braised beef short rib. Noodle brand Memir will also open there in October, showcasing buckwheat noodles and perilla oil.

“Perilla oil is very healthy,” he says. “It’s not very well known, but it has an amazing amount of omega-3 and a great taste. In some countries, people drink olive oil. In Korea, in the morning, people drink perilla oil because it’s very good for health.”

Drim, Modu, Tofu G and a wellness spa are set to open in Seoul in 2027, likely in touristy Myeongdong and luxury-shopping district Cheongdam. This is more than a pipe dream, it seems. He has practical reasons for the move.

He says: “It’s to create more buzz and to recruit talent. I also want our staff to be able to travel and experience working there. We want to be better tomorrow than we were yesterday.”

Cantera Collective: Solving puzzles

The current rebranding exercise from AC Concepts to Cantera Collective gives a clue about how Jose Alonso and Alex Chua run their company.

Cantera is a Spanish word that has special meaning for the founders.

“The first refers to a quarry, a place where raw stone is uncovered and carefully shaped into something valuable over time. That reflects how we work with people. We look for talent, help develop it and grow together,” says Alonso, 44.

“The second comes from Spanish football. A player who rises through the youth academy is said to come from the cantera. It represents development, patience and continuous improvement. That is exactly how we see our chefs, our partners and our company.”

The Spanish chef, who had worked at Binomio and Tapas Club, partnered Chua, 46, who runs a financial services company, in 2021 to set up the company. Chua was a regular at Binomio and they became friends. Their first restaurant together was Kulto in Amoy Street.

It is led by Alonso, who is now more involved in other aspects of the group.

He says: “I never consciously decided to stop being a chef. It happened naturally. Over time, my curiosity led me to become more involved in operations, strategy and leadership, and today, Alex and I make every important decision together. More than anything, we try to bring trust, stability and long-term thinking to the company.”

Chua says of the partnership: “What we share is a conviction that we’d do it as well as we possibly could, and meet every challenge by solving one problem at a time; pivoting, micro-pivoting, until things worked.”

The collective has eight restaurants in its portfolio. Aside from Kulto, there are Spanish restaurants Nomada in Keong Saik Road and Barrio in Greenwood Avenue; Spanish izakaya Humo in Keong Saik Road; Italian-Australian restaurant Cenzo in Club Street; wood-fired grill Il Toro in Gemmill Lane; pasta place Chicco in Telok Ayer Street; and Spanish-Mod-Sin restaurant Casa Mori in Dempsey Road.

Alonso says: “Before opening, we spend a great deal of time understanding the market, the location and the guest journey. Every decision comes back to one question: Will this create a better experience for our guests?

“While there is always an element of risk, our goal is always to create sustainable businesses that guests genuinely want to return to.”

Chef partners

One of the collective’s strategies has been to partner chefs who have a proven track record.

With Australian chef Drew Nocente, 45, they opened Cenzo in 2022, Chicco in 2023 and Il Toro in 2025. Nocente says he met Alonso and Chua in 2022, after he closed his previous restaurant, Salted & Hung, that year.

“The three of us share very similar values, work ethic and passion, and we think about hospitality and business in much the same way,” he says. “It just felt like the right fit.”

He says Cantera provides back-end knowledge and support. “That allows me to focus on what I do best, creating the food, refining the guest experience and growing the business from the front line,” he says. “Everyone plays to his strengths and that’s what makes the partnership work.”

This is also the view of Low, 54, who partnered Cantera to open Casa Mori in June.

He says: “Given the economic climate for restaurants, with ever-rising costs and thinning margins, having good food and good service are no longer sufficient. Good back-end systems with economies of scale are, more than ever, very relevant.”

“Unfortunately, most independent restaurant owners and chefs are usually not wired to build such systems,” adds Low, who also runs Mod-Sin pasta restaurant Pastaro in Chancery Court.

“We are usually more driven by passion. Just meeting the daily demands of hygiene, skill, manpower, regulatory compliance and accounting are enough to squeeze dry any free time. There is no strength left to be creative for the next menu, much less build sophisticated systems for human resource, marketing, finance and data analysis.”

Customer is king

Turning first-time diners into regulars is very much on the mind of the two founders.

Alonso says the biggest challenges of running restaurants are high operating costs – rent in particular – and manpower shortage.

He says: “The reality is that you can’t control those factors, so the focus has to be on building a concept that makes sense, operating it efficiently and consistently delivering an experience that gives people a reason to come back.

“Running restaurants today requires constant adaptation and that’s become part of the job.”

They are looking to open more restaurants in Singapore, by taking an existing brand to new locations here. They are also in the early days of discussing a Spanish bakery concept. Restaurants in Malaysia and Indonesia might be in the offing too.

Chua calls the restaurant scene here “incredibly dynamic”. Well-travelled diners open to new ideas and cuisines give operators creative freedom. Even having to import most of the ingredients can be turned into a strength, he says. Owners can source the best ingredients from anywhere in the world, to build any kind of restaurant.

“Few markets offer that kind of blank canvas,” he adds.

On the high rents and labour woes, he says: “Every market has its constraints. The job is to find a concept that works within that framework. It’s like solving a puzzle and, honestly, that’s the part I find most interesting.”