What Makes Lola Successful?
By Jade Hu - Thursday, May 08, 2014
Eggs Benedicts smack between Teochew Muay, Nasi Lemak, Curry Rice and Chye Png (economic rice). And that, could be the accidental success formula for Lola’s Café…or is it.
As far as similarly-themed cafe places would go, the enterprising Lola’s Cafe has found its sweet spot. So it serves up Western-style all-day breakfast items, specialty coffee (co-founder Choo Kiat came up with their very own Lola’s Blend), craft beers and quirky desserts (Seasalt Chocolate Tart with Coffee Cream, anyone?), attracting a well-heeled crowd from the late teens to the thirty-somethings…something that seem like a breath of fresh air in that old area.
Walking up to this place, you’ll see a table fashioned out of placing a plank atop a cast-iron retro sewing machine, surrounded by a wooden bench and designer wire-mesh chairs for seats. Instead of a greeter, they have an iPad perched on a stand – it’s a DIY electronic queuing system which sends you an SMS when it’s your turn, but instead, it made many cock their heads in confusion. A cheery-faced waitress pops out of the air-conditioned interior and tells you, almost apologetically, that a 30-minute wait is in order. It was Friday peak lunchtime and they only take reservations from Mondays to Thursdays. Good luck on weekends, unless you grabbed an electronic queue number in advance, you might be better off someplace else especially if you have ravenous and impatient diners in tow.
Still, this place rakes them in.
The parking here is pathetic (those few parallel parking spots are taken most of the time) – while I was there, the neighbourhood ‘summon uncle’ in attendance, sending some diners scrambling. The seating capacity is paltry – around 30 folks indoors at any one time – which explains the queue. I wondered why people are still coming in droves, only to be turned away or asked to wait.
It could be the hipster designer touches. Inside, what greets you is a mix of industrial chic and vintage cheekiness – the slate gray walls adorned by squarish black picture frames arranged in a haphazard yet deliberate in its ways. Behind the bar counter, the beverage menu is printed with chalk-inspired handwriting. Artfully plated brunch items such as the Lola’s Monty Big Breakfast are served on bright canary yellow and blood-orange red crockery. Their Avocado Eggs Benedict puts a healthy twist to the brunch item de rigueur. Nothing new, thus far. The buzzy yet not too noisy atmosphere makes it a cosy and relaxing brunch spot for catching up with friends…if it weren’t for the wait staff constantly hovering, almost obsequiously, to refill the water glasses. For a place that charges neither GST nor service charge, it’s almost ironic. The food is not earthshakingly new nor original by concept.
When asked what attracted her here, Samantha Pang, 19, a third-time diner at Lola’s Cafe, who has brought three friends with her this time, said, “We all live around the Serangoon area and I want them to try the desserts here.” Caryn Teh, 23, a university student, said, “I’ll consider coming back, and it helps that they don’t charge GST or service charge.”
Surely the two co-owners June Tan, 24, and Foo Choo Kiat, 26, know what’s bringing in the eggs-benedict-hungry hordes? Choo Kiat’s stint at running a student enterprise cafe on the SMU campus, which got him doing all the groundwork and studying the ins and outs of how to make a cafe work, may have taught him a thing or two about running an F&B business. But the duo is not sure if there is anything they did deliberately that hit the sweet spot. Neither do we. And they are planning for a second spot.
We hazard a guess…that the sweet spot is really about location and timing. If this catches on in that area, we are sure the butter will spread thinner on everyone’s bread, just like what’s happening at Tiong Bahru.
