TODAY

U Soe Nyi Nyi
Managin Director of FEEL Restaurant

With economic reforms already under way in Myanmar, Yangon has begun to see a gradual growth in the member of food shops, local as well as foreign ones such as the Pizza Company, Mahattan Fish Market, Lotteria etc. One of the Myanmar shops is FEEL that has established its name as a popular brand with 15 outlets attracting not only the locals but foreigners as well. The following is what U Soe Nyi Nyi, Managing Director, said about that restaurant.

How it came into being
Sometimes in 1992 I started out with my Dream Hamburger & Snack. When my eldest brother who had been in Australia where he had learnt how to make hamburger cooked it for us. we found it tasty. So when I got enough money for investment. I started opening the shop.

The name
We dropped Dream in the shop’s name and chose Feel instead. Feel connotes a nice feeling about food, service, cleanliness. etc. In our younger days we used to use the word ”feel” or “feeling” to express how nice it felt about some-thing good.

Cuisine and quality control
Our cuisine is our own creation. When after two or three months the novelty of our creation wore off, people would come and query, “Any more creation?” Encouraged by that demand we began to use ingredient of international standard quality and modern kitchen appliances, at the same time using precise amount or weight of things to be cooked together until we get the right consistency.

Service and hygiene
Our cooks possess a good knowledge of hygi-ene after attending cookery-related training courses conducted abroad by Unilever. I don’t mean we’ve achieved a hundred-percent success in this regard, but we think we can, if we can acquire a franchise from a foreign company that can show us how to preserve foods at how much temperature, how foods could spoil, how dysen-tery and diarrhoea bacteria can be killed, things like that.

New ideas for foods
I’m myself interested in making or doing new things. I dislike the old-fashioned ways. Say someone wishes to eat monhinga (Myanmar noodles) we can serve a variety of them–Tin Tin Aye monhinga, Myaungmya Daw Cho monhinga, anything. We have recipes always ready for them. When I first sold monhinga, we kept three varieties all at the same shop for the convenience of customers. I always have R&D in mind, trying to stay ever motivated. If a cer-tain shop if famous for a particular food item, I would go there and try eating it. We always make sure that what we have on sale at our shop are closest to the best, it not the best we can offer. I need no incentive from anyone. I’m a self-motivated was interested in doing R & D.

Prices

We offer good value for money. Prices are neither too high nor too low.

Preparedness to compete with foreign franchisees.
We’re not yet in a position to compete with international franchisee shops. Some of them have hundreds of outlets. We are no match for them in respect of age, experience, service, technical know-how, management, etc. So we have to focus on Myanmar foods. We must do Thai cuisine that we’re already good at, and if that doesn’t work right, we must hire Thai chefs and work under franchise. If we acquire know-how about Thai cuisine we will combine Thai food sale with our Myanmar food sale. Though there’re a number of franchise shops here in Myanmar, they do not seem to have the good image Feel has of its foods being free from anything that upsets the bowel or the stomach Feel takes care of catering service for state functions business meeting, birthday parties–areas in which we’ve earned a pretty good name. So we’ve thought of making catering our core business.

Plan for ASEAN market penetration in the event of AEC
We have that in mind but there’re things we have to take into consideration such as our capability to hire as many workers as we need amid an increasing number of companies offer-ing ever-better salaries. Ours is a labour-inten-sive business with 2500 employees in 15 shops. Other companies worldwide would not require that large number of workers, because they can do things the easy way, whereas we have to do practically everything by hand such as, peeling onions, cleaning meat and fish. We’ve got to use sodium bicarbonate to remove chemicals residues from vegetables – a process that cost a lot. If we have to penetrate that market we must have a central kitchen. There you prepare meat almost ready for the dining table at the outlets. There you need, say, only about 15 men, not 30, to do the rest of the job. One of our managers went to Japan at the invitation of JRO. He spent 14 days there, attending a course in such matters. For the moment our customer target is middle and upper class people.

Customer service for foreigners
If our employers could speak English they would be able to tell customers in an interesting way about our foods. That, I believe, can contri-bute to better customer service. I’ll try to achieve that, but for the moment I can assure our customers that the edible oil we use is pure and fresh and that we prepare our foods in hygienic conditions.

Main items
Foods foreigners eat most are prawn and steamed hilsa. As for Myanmar customers, they like all there are on the menu, particularly our award-wining dish of “fried chicken and rice sprinked with edible oil” that is available at our outlets along the highway as well as “rice noodles salad”. Main cuisine varies from shop to shop with Thai cuisine in some shops and Korean cuisine in others, but the main item in all our shops is invariably Myanmar food.

Comment on Myanmar restaurant market trend
Supply and demand are at present not in balance. Demand grows with the growing number of tourists coming in but supply can’t meet the demand. In future, as I see it, tourists would go to particular shops they like. Those with an appetite for Italian foods will go to Italian shops, for example, but they all are expected to try eating Myanmar foods at Myan-mar shops. So I think you’ll have a better chance of success with a Myanmar food shop, rather than any other food shops. That’s a fact you should know if you ever think of opening a food shop. We now have people from Thailand coming in large number and we can expect to have the good news about Myanmar food shop spreading by word of mouth. That’ll make for the success of Myanmar food speciality shops.

“Trip Adviser and “Myanmore” awards
The certificate of Excellence (2014 winner) we received from “Trip Adviser” was awarded on the basis of its website comments by tourists this country patronizing our shops. Another award “The Best Myanmar Restaurant 2014” is from MYANMORE, a Myanmar-based organi-zation that bases its decision on the recom-mendation of foreign tourists and expatriate workers.

Tarnslated by Nyunt Thaung