My father drove an ice lorry. Through the 1980s he delivered blocks of ice to coffee shops and market stalls around Geylang and Paya Lebar, before most of them owned a reliable freezer, and in the school holidays I rode beside him and watched the blocks shrink while stallholders argued about the weight. I still think about that lorry whenever someone shows me a cold-chain plan that assumes the journey takes as long as the map says.
198 bakeries, 52 cafés and 29 food halls in Singapore and Malaysia
People in the operations I lead
6,900
Outlets, two kitchens, 58 refrigerated lorries, procurement and food safety
Migrant-worker attrition, 2020 to 2023
34% → 11%
After repaying RM2.06 million in recruitment fees
A food business in this region is decided by costs that never reach the outlet's accounts: a worker's recruitment debt, a lorry's hours at the border, a platform's commission and the afternoon heat.
I am the chief operating officer of Rumbia Food Group Limited, a fictional bakery, café and food-hall group listed on the SGX Mainboard and still 48 per cent owned by the family that opened its first bakery in a Toa Payoh housing estate in 1981. In the year to December 2025 we earned S$642 million from 198 Rumbia Bakehouse outlets, 52 Rumbia Kopi cafés and 29 Laman Food Halls across Singapore and Malaysia, plus royalties from 57 franchised bakeries in Thailand. Almost everything we sell starts in one of two kitchens: a large one at Senai in Johor and a smaller chilled one at Senoko in Singapore.
I trained as a mechanical engineer and spent my first years designing cold rooms. Since then I have run shifts in a Jurong flour mill, managed a frozen-dumpling plant in Woodlands, led operations for 410 convenience stores in Malaysia, most of them franchised, and joined Rumbia in 2014 to build the Senai kitchen, becoming COO in April 2019. About 6,900 of our 7,600 people work in the outlets, kitchens, fleet and support teams I run.
Most of my decisions as COO have moved a hidden cost onto our own books: fees our migrant workers had paid agents to be hired, the risk of a single overnight border crossing, the true cost of a delivered breakfast and the heat inside a franchisee's kiosk. One of them, a second kitchen in Singapore, partly undid a concentration I had designed myself. None of these choices improved the year's figures at first. Each made our accounts more truthful about what it costs to feed people in a hot, crowded and closely regulated region.
Recruitment debt repaid, and attrition cut by two-thirds
We repaid RM2.06 million to 412 migrant workers at Senai in 2021 and now pay all recruitment costs ourselves. Their annual attrition fell from 34 per cent in 2020 to 11 per cent in 2023.
Chilled products made on the right side of the border
Our S$19 million Senoko kitchen, opened in January 2025, took the riskiest 30 per cent of volume off the overnight Causeway run. Transit discards fell from S$640,000 in 2023 to S$90,000 in 2025.
Delivery priced as its own product
A shorter delivery menu, open delivery pricing and withdrawal from 11 food halls cost S$9 million of delivery sales in 2023. Delivery contribution rose from minus 1.8 to plus 8.6 per cent of its sales by 2024.
A franchise network reset for heat and flood
We paused our Thai franchisee's openings for a year, co-funded chillers and closed 13 kiosks. Audit passes rose from 71 to 96 per cent of outlets, and average sales per outlet rose 22 per cent.
Current focus
Two programmes take most of my time this year. One replaces display chillers in 64 older bakeries with units rated for hotter rooms and reviews flood exposure at 23 Malaysian outlets. The other is a trial of five smaller bakes a day in 40 outlets, which has cut unsold product from 9.4 to 6.1 per cent of production value.
Conversations I welcome
I am not looking to leave Rumbia. With my board's consent I would take one independent non-executive directorship at an SGX- or Bursa Malaysia-listed company outside food whose results depend on frontline people or physical sites, joining its risk and remuneration committees. I can give about twenty-four days a year, and I speak occasionally to operations and supply-chain audiences.
Beyond the page
The record behind the perspective.
In the boardroom
Rumbia Food (Malaysia) Sdn. Bhd.Executive director of the Malaysian subsidiary, which the group wholly owns · 2016–present
Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical)Seloka University · 1999
Master of Science in Supply Chain Management, part-timeRimba Institute of Supply Chain Management · 2007
Desmond's reports to our committee changed character the year he arrived. He added the near-misses, which made the numbers look worse and our discussions far better. When he disagrees with management, including with himself, it is in the paper before the meeting, not in the corridor afterwards.
Theresa Quek Li WenFictional independent director and chair of the Audit and Risk Committee, Rumbia Food Group LimitedThe full record ↗
Contact
I am not looking to leave Rumbia. With my board's consent I would take one independent non-executive directorship at an SGX- or Bursa Malaysia-listed company outside food whose results depend on frontline people or physical sites, joining its risk and remuneration committees. I can give about twenty-four days a year, and I speak occasionally to operations and supply-chain audiences.
