Young Coffeeshop Owner Closing Down Last Coffeeshop After Being ‘Conned’

By
George Yang
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If you’re like XiaoBeach73, you’d think that a coffeeshop owner is a rich towkay who drives a Mercedes Benz, sends his kids overseas to study and collect rental from stallholders every month as passive income.

Heck, if you’re as stupid as BuffLord95, you might even think that coffeeshop owners spend all their time sipping coffee and smoking Marlboro in the coffeeshop.

It turns out that it’s not that simple.

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At least, according to this Facebook post by a young coffeeshop owner that’s both intriguing and…interesting.

Here’s what happened.

Young Coffeeshop Owner Calling It Quits

What comes to your mind when you see this headline?

“Alamak, locals don’t support locals lah!”

“Hawker culture gone liao!”

“Landlord greedy!”

“70%?”

Apparently, this isn’t your run-of-the-mill story about a struggling hawker who hung up his ladle after an outrageous increase in rental. Instead, this story is from the point of view of a coffeeshop owner (i.e. the “landlord”), and here it goes.

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I’ve got to admit that it’s quite difficult to understand because of all the chim terms and whatnot, so we’ve simplified everything for you here after reading it more than five times:

  • Melvin is a university graduate (or so I infer, since he has got “university classmates”)
  • In 2016, he invested and operated a canteen in Tampines with Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) sponsoring some money to kickstart the business (yeah, I also didn’t know LPG would help fund coffeeshops!)
  • But the money isn’t “given” to the owner: they’re advanced payment that they’ve to return after a while
  • Melvin got into the business with two people he knew though mutual friends
  • He became the “guarantor” as the two people had some “past history” in the market
  • Long story cut short, they opened more coffeeshops with the LPG sponsorships
  • However, the two people anyhowly spend the money they get from LPG, sales and rental from stalls
  • One of them even collected rental and sales from stallholders as he claimed Melvin is just the manager of the coffeeshop
  • The person allegedly spent the money in night clubs, a condo, a car and whatnot
  • Eventually, Melvin raked up millions of dollars in debt

Of course, just like you, I’m flabbergasted: it’s common for small business to have rather messy accounts, but for money to be gone just like that for more than two years?

To a debt of…millions?!

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Melvin hasn’t planned his next step, but has said this: “I’ve gained rich exposures at a heavy price; to all who care for me I’m here to tell you I’m fine and I’m fighting strong to move on with life.”

In fact, he had a farewell party in his last coffeeshop on 15 March 2019 and even posted videos of the party.

Lessons

Now, while this is a rather shocking piece of story that you can decide whether to believe or not, here’s one lesson which echoed what our boss has often said:

“In business, always be paranoid, always trust no one and always be prepared for the knife from behind.”

While we’re pretty sure that’s the reason why he has no friends, there’s some logic in that sentence: if you trust someone so easily, you might just be another Melvin.

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George Yang
Email: [email protected]