When Ms Taneem Noor approached Dahlia in earlier this year, she was hopeful on turning her 7-year old business around and explore ways of expanding it. Ms Tasneem is a proud owner of FIKA Swedish Café and Bistro, the only restaurant in Singapore that serves authentic Halal Swedish food. Together with her husband, Joakim, they set up FIKA in 2009 and expanded to 3 outlets within 3 years. Over the years, the pair started seeing a decline in the number of customers and felt that it was necessary to find alternative avenues of income and cut down costs.
Exploring areas of improvement
Tasneem approached Dahlia in August to explore ways of improving her business through reviewing business operations and repositioning the business within the F&B industry. Through complimentary one-on-one consultations, Dahlia assisted Tasneem in identifying the gaps within her management. She also sat down with Tasneem to develop a roadmap moving forward which includes generating extra revenue such as renting out the second floor of her first outlet to private parties and functions. They also partnered with a small event planner to utilize their space for 3-6 months.
“I wanted Tasneem to realize that with proper assessment and tweaking of business strategies, her business can grow and flourish,” explained Dahlia. Tasneem and Joakim decided to further expand their business and expressed interest in opening a bakery. They engaged Bakers@Work, a brand and marketing consultant and created a proposal in hopes of applying for the Capability Development Grant (CDG) by SPRING Singapore. In order to increase their chances of getting the grant approved, they sat down with Dahlia, who guided them along in defining the main objectives of the proposal, detailing deliverables and possible outcomes.
Overcoming odds to emerge stronger
The pair launched Konditori in October this year, serving homemade Scandinavian artisan bakes. Apart from being halal, both Tasneem and Joakim ensured that they uphold the Swedish authenticity. “Scandinavians usually prefer gluten free options. So Konditori also offers products without gluten, nuts and diary. We believe in promoting conscious eating and would like our customers to have a wide range of choices,” says Tasneem. Their bakery also adopted a takeaway concept in order to save space and save on rental. According to the Tasneem, her bakery makes more than any of her Fika cafes and the rental for the bakery’s rental is a quarter of that she’s paying for her first outlet at Beach Road.
“Sometimes, you need to take a step back, re-look at your business model and implement changes to optimize it. I’m grateful to Dahlia for inspiring me with innovative ideas to spruce up my business. It helped that I was able to get opinions from a third-person perspective,” shared Tasneem.