Yong tau foo stall at Chinatown to stay open after all, as only one brother is leaving the hawker life

SINGAPORE: After two brothers announced that their five-month-old hawker stall in Chinatown would be closing, there has been a happy turnaround, as one of them is staying on in the business.

Thirty-one-year-old Troy Lee and his brother Scott, 29, opened New Horse Noodles in June. They left their careers in finance in order to enter the hawker industry, even though they had no prior experience in F&B. After having trained in Melaka for 10 days under an 85-year-old hawker who taught them how to make Hakka yong tau foo for free.

And while the reviews on Google have been impressive, the Lee brothers announced on Sept 28 that they would be closing shop. 

Troy Lee said in a video that followed that he’s known since early August that the hawker life just isn’t for him. Nevertheless, nothing ventured, nothing gained. If they had never tried it out, they would never have realised that this is not what they want after all, he added.

The stall was supposed to have its last day on Oct 25. However, on Oct 28, the brothers announced in an Instagram video using “unreleased footage from The Dark Knight Rises” that Scott Lee would make a go of things on his own.

“New Horse Noodles rises,” the end of the clip says.

In the next video, while parodying an unveiling of a new product from Apple, Troy gave the floor to Scott, who explained that after the news of the stall’s closure was widely covered in the media, many people came down to try the food at New Horse Noodles, telling them it would be a waste to end the business, and even offering to help out or find solutions.

He went on to say that he had mistakenly assumed it would take a while to hire someone to help run the business with his brother leaving, as the stall was already turning a profit.

Realizing that he would not have to do everything on his own was a game changer, and after some sleepless nights of thinking things through, he withdrew his hawker cancelation application with the NEA.

Scott added that having someone to help him would free up the time for him to do what he loves, which is serving customers and building relationships with them.

A couple of posts later, Scott announced that he had hired an assistant to help with preparation and cooking.

Importantly, since having additional help means higher overhead costs, he announced that New Horse Noodles will be open six days a week, instead of five, as it had previously been. The stall will be open every day except Friday, he added.

For him, it will still be a seven-day workweek as Fridays are needed for prep work, and Scott confessed that he still doesn’t know how it will play out.

“Either way, I will still do my best to make this work,” he promised. /TISG

Read also: ‘Hawker life just isn’t for me’: Singapore brothers close Chinatown stall after 5 months