IT’S a fascination how social media can be a double-edged sword to many of today’s micro or small food & beverage (F&B) players.
Imagine these two contrasting business fortunes. People are willing to ‘sunbath’ up for up to eight hours to savour Sangeetha Manimalar’s famed “Akka Nasi Lemak Viral” after her stall went viral following a recent KL Foodie review.
On the contrary, two miniscule slices of butter on each side of a supposedly butter & kaya toast has have invited scores of unforgiving netizens hurling harsh brickbats at OLDTOWN White Coffee – the supposedly modern day kopitiam.
Before we leave it to netizens – the former, current and perhaps future OLDTOWN customers to have their say – allow us to trace a bit of the group’s corporate history as wise people always remarked that past events could always have a bearing on the present.
Stock punters would recall that OLDTOWN was part of an entity of the home-grown coffeemaker OldTown Bhd which was delisted from Bursa Malaysia on April 4, 2018 after having debuted on the Main Market of the local bourse in July 2011 at an issue price of RM1.25/share.
The delisting exercise came about after Dutch coffee company Jacobs Douwe Egberts (JDE) successfully gained control of OldTown via its indirect unit Jacobs Douwe Egberts Holdings Asia NL BV (JDE Asia) after its RM3.18/share offer closed on March 20, 2018 with valid acceptances for 456.8 million OldTown shares or 98.6% stake in the company.
While JDE Asia wanted to take OldTown private to obtain greater control and management flexibility when implementing strategic initiatives or making any changes to the company, analysts covering the stock had hailed the offer as a “sweet way” for shareholders to cash out.
This is especially since OldTown’s latest financials back then were already showing signs of strain with the company acknowledging that the outlook for both its segments – cafe chain operation and beverage manufacturing – having remained competitive and challenging.
With that, we leave the floor to netizens to vent their opinions as to how OLDTOWN ‘can bounce back’ (the following are comments posted on OLDTOWN’s very own Facebook page after it apologised for the minuscule butter blunder):
Richard Wong: “Top management has to go to the ground, no point letting the staff know who you are. Send some unfamiliar face ‘spies’ to monitor the outlets. Check out the food quality, staff attitude and service especially the outlet managers.
If leadership at outlet is not up to the mark, same standard would probably go to food and staff under him or her. Tidak apa (cannot be bothered) attitude probably is the reason or one of the reasons affecting this chain restaurants.”
Eszumeen Juferi; “I’m glad someone post this online (miniscule butter on toast) and I’ve to say this is NOT a one-time incident and most definitely not going to be the last. I am a regular at old town and as years passed, I started to notice all OLDTOWN outlets are doing the same – from AEON Cheras Selatan to OLDTOWN Bukit Cheras, to OLDTOWN Mahkota Cheras to OLDTOWN AEON Klang.
It came to a point where every time I placed my order, I will personally demand the restaurant staff extra kaya and butter and telling them it’ fine if they charge me extra for it and this is how “extra” looks like.
We understand that raw material prices are increasing but if this is the quality of food that comes out from the kitchen, perhaps it’s time for a price review and business plan review because eventually all your outlets will most definitely be losing business.”
Koo SengSeng: “I’ve stopped going to OLDTOWN in the past five years. I still remember the quality of the food I had the last time.
For its chicken hor fun, I could only see soup upon serving. I had to dig deep like finding nemo to eat the noodles and to find the shrimps (two to three pieces A4-size shrimps). Nothing to expect for the overall taste. RM10+ but my stomach still felt empty after eating.
As for nasi lemak, there wasn’t any coconut fragrant on its rice. Its fried chicken seemed more like fried nugget. The anchovy, peanuts and cucumbers are okay. Overall, the portion was too small for RM14+ the last time (five years ago).
The iced coffee was filled with ice in the entire glass; just four seconds of sipping and that’s it. Charged RM6/RM7+ per glass but felt like nothing after drinking.
From the comments (by netizens), apparently the same issues are still in existence after so many years: expensive price but small portion and average taste.
Even their statement (of apology) didn’t reflect how they take customers’ feedback seriously or what steps are being taken to resolve customers’ complaints. Can’t expect OLDTOWN to have any step and plan to improve. Probably not going to visit OLDTOWN unless there’s really no food available (elsewhere).”
Noor Riza Hussain: “I stopped going since 10 years ago because service was slow and food quality was not value for money. Nowadays, l prefer going to independent cafes as the food and ambience are better.”
Hafiz Barkawi: “The OLDTOWN White Coffee statement does not directly express an apology! No manners at all! Who is the admin (administrator) or PR (public relations officer) of OLDTOWN White Coffee? So insensitive.” – May 14, 2023
