Seafood Restaurant With Live Crab Claw Machine Drew Flak for Selling Overpriced Masks

2020-02-11 , 9:00 am

With the Wuhan situation in Singapore, there are plenty of scared people looking to get themselves some protection.

And we all know the basic economic theory of demand vs supply: When the demand increases and supply decreases, the price increases.

Plenty of people has allegedly come forward to profit off the demand for facemasks, including a seafood restaurant.

House of Seafood

House of Seafood announced that they are selling facemasks to House of Seafood customers exclusively on 9 Feb 2020.

The price? $21.40 for a box of facemasks, limited to one per table.

Unsurprisingly, the restaurant was flamed by netizens badly ~~because we’re all jealous we never thought of it~~.

‘It’s All A Misunderstanding’

Francis Ng, the managing director and owner of the restaurant told AsiaOne that this was all a “big misunderstanding”.

He claimed that when he had gotten the facemasks into Singapore, he was not planning to sell them.

$21.40, he said, was the cost price of the mask.

So how did “giving” turn into “selling”?

Employees Wanted To Help The Business

That’s because of good employees, according to Ng.

A customer saw his staff packing the facemasks one day in the restaurant. Approaching them, the customer wanted to buy one box of facemasks and got one at cost price.

Wanting to help the restaurant because “business wasn’t good lately”, the employees decide to use the sale of the facemasks to generate publicity.

When he finally came to know about it, he asked them to take the post down.

Facemasks Are Supposed To Be Given To Loyal Customers

Ng revealed that he had never intended to sell the facemask from the beginning.

The announcement sent out to loyal customers / Image: AsiaOne

He had wanted to distribute it to loyal customers to thank them for their continued support throughout these years.

For extra facemasks, he intends to donate them to charity or sell them to customers at “cost price”.

Not The First Time House Of Seafood Got Into Trouble Online

If you find the name of the restaurant familiar, that’s because they went viral previously as well.

They were the restaurant that launched the live crab vending machine that caused a big hooha on the internet.

Needless to say, SPCA and other animal lovers in Singapore were not amused.

Back then, the restaurant said that the claw machine was actually there “for education purposes”.

But at least one good thing came out of the House of Seafood Facemask saga.

Singaporeans are no longer willing to accommodate profiteers looking to make a tidy amount off the sales of facemasks.

After all, with no demand, profiteers can only see their precious goods languish in the storeroom.