Overcoming debt, adversity to start zi char restaurant

Saddled with $100,000 of debt at age 33 after his first coffee shop venture tanked, Kuala Lumpur-born Danny Chan was unfazed.

- Hedy Khoo

He started over as an economy rice cook, and eventually had a chain of four coffee shops and over 30 food stalls to his name a decade later.

But rapid expansion had its pitfalls. At age 43, he fell into greater debt, this time to the tune of nearly a million dollars, after a lack of manpower and operational issues forced him to break tenancy and wind up operations.

The entrepreneur pulled himself together again and continued operating his remaining coffee shop in Bishan, where he ran a zi char stall.

At 44, cobbling together $200,000 from selling his gold jewellery, cashing out his insurance policies and earnings from his stall, he founded eatery Yu Cun Claypot Curry Fish Head in Upper Paya Lebar in 2014.

This year, after celebrating his 54th birthday, he marked the 10th anniversary of his zi char restaurant with the opening of a second outlet at Sultan Gate on Nov 17.

Occupying a three-storey shop-house unit that seats 128 diners, the outlet cost $500,000 to set up. Mr Chan is renovating the third storey to put in private rooms.

The eldest of three siblings, he first came to Singapore at age 13 with his family. His father worked as a tiling subcontractor and his mother helped out.

His parents enrolled him in Secondary 1 at San Yu Adventist School, but he dropped out a year later as he could not catch up with the English syllabus. He had attended a Chinese school in Kuala Lumpur.

He found a job as a trainee at a Cantonese restaurant run by a Hong Kong chef, enduring daily scoldings and being rapped on his head with a ladle whenever he made a mistake.

Within a year, he did well enough to lead the food preparation station and cook staff meals at the now-defunct restaurant in South Bridge Road for the next three years.