Tastemakers: Rising from heartbreak to build burger brand Ashes Burnnit

SINGAPORE – In 2019, everything fell apart for Mr Lee Syafiq Muhammad Ridzuan Lee.

A business split cost him the burger brand he built and the friends he trusted. And three months before his wedding scheduled for January that year, he discovered his fiancee was seeing someone else.

He took over the hawker stall at Golden Mile Food Centre that he had run with his former partners since 2017 and rebranded it Ashes Burnnit. The name, he says, was a reminder to rise from the ashes and keep his passion burning.

“I had a point to prove,” the 33-year-old says. “People said I couldn’t sell the burgers on my own. They thought that was the end of me.”

Picking up the pieces after that double blow was not easy. He threw himself into work, but lost his appetite and barely slept. Each night, he cried himself to sleep after punishing 14-hour days of cooking, serving and cleaning.

“I was in a personal crisis,” he says. “I had lost two of my closest friends and my fiancee. My career was in shambles. I had to start over in every aspect of my life.”

Mr Lee Syafiq, who calls himself a late bloomer, found his footing through culinary training.

He preferred the kitchen to the classroom and earned his Nitec certificate in Culinary Arts (Western) from ITE Clementi, followed by a Technical Diploma in Culinary Arts with Restaurant Management and a bachelor’s degree in gastronomy and restaurant management from ITE College West in 2013.

The course, conducted in collaboration with Institut Paul Bocuse, included a two-week exchange in Lyon, France.

Back in Singapore, he interned at Balzac Brasserie and Bar and Jaan at Swissotel The Stamford before joining one-Michelin-starred Terra Tokyo Italian as chef de partie after national service.

In 2017, he co-founded a burger brand with two partners, but by 2019, tensions surfaced. He preferred to grow the business through profits and reinvestment, while his partners wanted to bring in investors. Unable to come to an agreement, they parted ways.

Rising from the ashes

On Sept 18, 2019, a day before his birthday, he opened Ashes Burnnit with $25,000 of his savings and started from scratch, creating a new charcoal bun for his gourmet burgers – a fitting nod to the stall’s name and meaning.

“There were days in the first three months when I had zero dollars in my bank account,” he says. He worked seven days a week, 14 hours a day. Three months later, the stall started turning a profit.

Today, its bestsellers include Chilli Short Ribs Cheese Burger With Fries ($10.50), featuring a housemade patty with smoked cheddar cheese, topped with thinly sliced pan-fried short ribs, chipotle sauce and pickled chillies for some heat. 

A favourite from the chain’s early days is Grilled Chicken Mac & Cheese ($8). The restaurant-quality macaroni, imported from Naples in Italy, is larger and thicker than other brands of macaroni here. The sauce is a savoury blend of three cheeses – nacho cheese, mozzarella and smoked cheddar.

Newer outlets under the Ashes X brand at Canberra and Sengkang also serve drinks such as Buttercream Milk ($5), a mix of butterscotch syrup, whipping cream and milk that is not overly sweet.

Between 2020 and 2025, Ashes Burnnit expanded steadily using profits from earlier outlets to fund new ones, each costing about $25,000 to start.

The brand grew from its second outlet in Alexandra Village Food Centre in 2020 to four more in heartland coffee shops, followed by the opening of Ashes X Canberra in February 2024 and Ashes X Sengkang in July 2025.

Poor business decisions

In February 2022, Mr Lee Syafiq channelled $200,000 from his first three outlets into a new venture. He launched Maison Sucree at Lengkok Bahru, an air-conditioned Muslim-owned bakery-cafe selling French-style croissants for $3 each under an HDB block.

Four months later, he spent another $300,000 opening a second outlet and office in a shophouse unit in Balestier.

As he was unfamiliar with baking, he relied on a former ITE schoolmate, whom he partnered, to run operations. Production bottlenecks and staff conflicts soon followed. Disagreements between his partner and the head baker ended with the latter’s resignation.

Within 18 months of opening, both outlets had to close as nobody else on the team knew the recipe for the croissant.

Mr Lee Syafiq lost $500,000 in the venture. But painful as it was, he views failure as his greatest teacher.

“From that experience, I learnt to do risk assessment before I make any investment decisions. Do what I know and do not depend entirely on others for their expertise and skills.”

Profits from Ashes Burnnit helped absorb the loss. He went on to launch charcoal-grill Western stall Charrbo with two partners and, most recently, Sembarang, a Muslim-owned yong tau foo stall beside his Ashes Burnnit outlet at the same Teck Whye coffee shop.

The Ashes Burnnit burger chain now pulls in $4.5 million in annual revenue, while the Ashes Burnnit Group generates $6 million in revenue yearly.

To scale efficiently, he created standard operating procedures for staff training and daily tasks. Rather than set up a central kitchen, he works with a food factory to produce his charcoal buns and marinated meats according to his recipes.

He says he has become a more thoughtful leader. Once a self-confessed “slave driver” who dismissed employees who could not keep up with his frenetic pace of working, he now focuses on staff welfare.

Experience and advice from his wife of five years to build staff loyalty changed his outlook.

“Without the team, I cannot succeed,” he says, revealing that all employees work five days a week – which is rare in F&B – and top performers receive hotel-stay rewards.

“In F&B, you have little time with your family,” he adds. “This is one way we give back to our team.”

He credits Mr Muhammad Farhan, 32, his chief executive and national service buddy who joined from day one and went unpaid for three months, with reminding him to value people.

Family support has been crucial too. His father, aged 65, a retired project coordinator in the oil and gas industry, helped with deliveries for more than a year after Ashes Burnnit began.

Striking a balance

In September 2020, he married his best friend’s younger sister, Ms Piscesca Dyana Pristifani Samion, 30, who now handles design and marketing for the Ashes Burnnit Group.

Learning from past mistakes, Mr Lee Syafiq made time for their relationship even while building his business. She often visited his stall and paid for their meals when he was not drawing a salary in the initial months of their dating life.

He credits her for helping him find balance. By 2022, Mr Lee Syafiq had stepped back from daily stall work to focus on business development and brand building, overseeing 35 employees under the Ashes Burnnit Group.

“I still cook for pop-ups on weekends when needed,” he says, “But I try to block one weekend a month just for my wife. We’ll go for dinner or a quick trip to Johor Bahru.”

He is also studying for a real-estate licence to better understand commercial properties. “It’ll help me find good locations and negotiate directly with landlords,” he says.

He plans to open two Ashes Burnnit outlets in Jurong – one by the end of 2025 and another in 2026 – before working on expanding to Muslim-friendly markets in the Middle East, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Six years on, Mr Lee Syafiq says the meaning of Ashes Burnnit has evolved. “It used to be about proving people wrong,” he says. “Now, it’s about how far I can go from here. I still have a long way to go.”

“I grew up with nasi lemak and chicken rice,” he adds. “One day, I hope people will talk about burgers the same way – that Singapore has a famous black-bun burger from Ashes Burnnit.”