Owners of hawker stall chain Jofa make bold move to open $400,000 coffee shop in tough F&B year

SINGAPORE – At a time when rising costs and closures are weighing on the food and beverage industry, the three co-owners behind Jofa, a chain of coffee-shop stalls, are preparing to make their biggest move yet. 

Come July, co-owners Joel Tan, 30, Fabian Lim, 30, and Liang Jun Hao, 31, are opening a coffee shop at 531 Bedok North Street 3, with set-up costs of around $400,000.

It is a major leap for a brand that began five years ago as a mee pok stall in a Tampines coffee shop, funded by $30,000 from Mr Tan and Mr Lim’s savings.

They started Jofa Meepok to sell a version of bak chor mee that suited their taste buds, with noodles that have a firm bite and less alkaline taste.

The pair wiped out their savings back then. “We refused to borrow any money from our parents as we did not know how it was going to turn out, and we wanted to be liable for our actions,” says Mr Tan.

Today, the business has grown into three concepts: Jofa Meepok in Woodlands, and Jofa Grill and Jofa-Oji Donburi, which are run as dual-concept stalls in Tampines and Punggol.

Mr Tan says: “I think every business owner’s dream is to constantly grow and expand. It is fine as long as we don’t bite off more than we can chew.”

The partners learnt that lesson the hard way.

Jofa began at a coffee shop at Block 824 Tampines Street 81. Mr Tan and Mr Lim became friends when studying at Temasek Polytechnic in Tampines, and so are familiar with the area.

Mr Tan graduated with a diploma in culinary and catering management, while Mr Lim obtained his diploma in marketing, both in 2016.

Mr Tan went on to the Singapore Institute of Technology, where he graduated in 2020 with a degree in business administration in food business management and culinary arts, under a joint programme with the Culinary Institute of America.

He had been chasing business ideas long before Jofa. At 15, he sold macarons online. While in school, he worked part-time as a server and kitchen crew. Between 2019 and 2021, he ran a home-based online artisanal kombucha business.

When Mr Lim suggested starting a stall in 2021, Mr Tan agreed without hesitation. He was then working as a chef de partie at now-closed grill restaurant Panamericana, which served farm-to-fire cuisine.

In line with his original goal to be a chef, he joined the restaurant in October 2020, but left after six months.

Upon turning 25, he wanted to hit six figures in investment assets before age 30 and felt that staying a chef would not get him there. He switched to selling insurance, while keeping an eye out for business opportunities.

The start of Jofa

The name Jofa came from combining Joel and Fabian.

Their first stall did better than expected, breaking even after four months. It opened during the Covid-19 period, when people were not travelling and spent more on food. Support came from family, friends and customers.

Mr Lim, who had worked as an executive at a company selling automated gates before starting Jofa, handled operations. Mr Tan took care of the backend work, marketing and future planning.

Clocking 14 hours a day, six days a week, they returned to the stall to cook chilli and lard for the mee pok even on their days off.

An enduring bestseller is the Jofa Signature Minced Meat Noodle ($6.90), a bowl of al dente noodles served with seafood, including scallop, prawn paste and mock abalone.

The business expanded in June 2022 with a second Jofa Meepok outlet in Chinatown’s Temple Street.

Barely two years later, the first outlet had to move several times because of changes in coffee-shop operators.

One relocation became their costliest setback. In August 2024, after ending a lease in Tampines before securing the right replacement, the partners rushed into a new location in Jalan Besar to avoid renting storage space for their equipment.

But the rental was high, footfall was weak and business was so poor that opening the stall cost more than leaving it vacant. Unable to exit the lease early, they paid rent on an empty stall until the contract ended a year later, losing more than $70,000.

The episode strained cash flow badly enough that the partners worried about whether the business could survive. “It turned out to be the biggest lesson for us – to not rush into things just to save ‘small money’,” says Mr Tan.

Even so, the partners pushed on.

Inspired by his time at Panamericana, Mr Tan wanted to bring quality wood-fire grilled food to a coffee-shop setting.

Jofa Grill opened in September 2022 in Bukit Merah Central. Mr Liang, who is the founder-partner of modern Thai restaurant Hue, joined as a partner that year, when the team was planning the grill concept. He and Mr Tan became friends when working together at Open Farm Community in 2015.

Compared with the mee pok stalls, the first Jofa Grill outlet struggled to take off. It cost $65,000 to set up and took 10 months to break even. Competition was stiff, given there was a food centre nearby. The partners closed it in March 2025.

They had doubts about the concept, but decided to give it another shot in November 2023 by pairing it with Japanese rice bowls.

They spent $55,000 to open the dual-concept Jofa Grill and Jofa-Oji Donburi stall at a coffee shop in Tampines Street 81. The outlet broke even six months later and is still operating profitably.

Signature dishes include Charcoal Grill Chicken Chop ($8.90), grilled over charcoal and lychee wood for a smoky aroma, and served with housemade black pepper sauce and housemade coleslaw.

For rice bowls, a top seller is the Salmon Mentai Don ($9.90), which comes with seared salmon topped with mentaiko, short-grain rice, furikake and an onsen egg.

The pairing worked because the grill and donburi concepts could share ingredients, equipment and manpower. For instance, chicken chop can be used for both the grill menu and the donburi bowls. Its performance encouraged the partners to open another outlet in Punggol’s Northshore Drive in October 2024.

As the business grew, so did the partners’ responsibilities.

Mr Liang handles manpower, scheduling, quality control and suppliers. Mr Lim oversees operations and finance. Mr Tan takes care of menu research and development, expansion, marketing and social media.

The partnership has tested and strengthened their friendship. In the early years, the hardest conversations were over job scopes, when each partner sometimes felt he was doing more than the others. Over time, they learnt to communicate through those tensions.

The business has forced them to mature quickly.

“Being in the F&B environment forced us to evolve from boys to men in the business world,” Mr Tan says.

He has another career to juggle. In June 2021, during the same period he started Jofa, he also became an insurance agent. He now runs a team of seven advisers, with four or five more expected to join in 2026.

He says insurance and F&B fulfil different parts of him. Insurance teaches him emotional intelligence, people skills and discipline, all of which help him manage customers and staff.

“I still work up to 14 hours a day and wake up every day (feeling) tired and stressed, but I would pick this stress and fatigue any time any day because the fulfilment I get from this is different,” says Mr Tan, who is getting married in November. His 28-year-old fiancee runs a wholesale clothing company and an online fashion brand.

Mr Lim and Mr Liang are single.

An ambitious move

With three outlets now, the partners are preparing for their most ambitious move: a coffee shop in Bedok North, which is a joint venture with partners and scheduled to open in two months.

Diners can expect a new Jofa stall, likely to be a dual concept with Jofa Meepok anchoring the pairing. The partners are still deciding on the combination.

Expansion plans include a fish soup stall, either by year-end or early 2027. The partners hope to open up to 10 outlets in the next three years. They are not ruling out more coffee shops, depending on how the first one performs.

Mr Tan says peers in F&B are surprised that Jofa is moving into coffee-shop operations, especially when others are exiting the dining scene.

He adds: “We started our brand during the pandemic amid great uncertainty. We survived that and did pretty well. This has given us the mindset that there is no good time to take on a new challenge. The best time is when you feel ready and we feel ready to take on this new venture.”

“If we fail, we will go back to what we do best – running coffee-shop stalls. Or we might just try again, with more experience and knowledge learnt,” he adds.

Jofa Grill X Jofa Oji Donburi

Where: 01-254 Kopi Soh Kopitiam, Block 828 Tampines Street 81
Open: 11 to 3am daily
Info: @jofagrill on Instagram

Jofa Grill X Jofa Oji Donburi

Where: 01-01 Tamchiak Kopitiam, Block 431A Northshore Drive
Open: 11 to 3am (Mondays to Saturdays), 11am to 11pm (Sundays)

Jofa Meepok

Where: 01-30/31 Woodlands Mart, 768 Woodlands Avenue 6
Open: 7am to 9pm daily
Info: @jofameepok