Bringing banana leaf cuisine to the masses

High growth: A Bananabro outlet in Berjaya Times Square in Kuala Lumpur. The target is to grow the outlets to anywhere between 80 and 100 in the country by the end of 2025.

THE fiery passion for the food and beverage (F&B) business led Tony Lim and his buddies to venture into the banana leaf cuisine (BLC) business. Unlike the usual banana leaf restaurants in the country, Bananabro (BBro) took a different approach.

Lim tells StarBizWeek BBro has a standard menu across all its outlets catering to affordable and quick BLC that is of quality, served in a comfortable, bright, airy and clean environment.

BBro has been certified halal since 2019, thus making it suitable for all types of consumers, including vegans and vegetarians.

“At our outlets, we offer customers a free flow of rice and a variety of side dishes. This feature makes us stand out compared to other commercial F&B operators, especially in light of today’s cost of living issue.

“Not many homegrown F&B joints can claim to showcase ‘Malaysian cuisine’, but our menu offerings transcend race and culture, as our cuisine can be enjoyed by all races in the country.

“BBro has successfully adopted normal ‘street food’ into a commercial and evergreen F&B concept that is fun and welcoming for all, including tourists and expatriates,” Lim explains.

He says the company’s strategy in ensuring high accessibility to BLC is key in capturing a higher market share, and spurring revenue growth and expansion of its outlets.

Lim says he decided to go into the banana leaf business in 2017 as he felt it is a simple everyday cuisine and was still relatively rather untouched.

“I find BLC dining very common in Kuala Lumpur and Petaling Jaya.

“I remember first experiencing it after moving to Kuala Lumpur in 2003 and it was a very ‘satisfying’ way to eat what we are familiar with – all the tastes of the mixed curries, hot steaming rice, masala dishes, fried items like the tenggiri fish, chicken, and, of course, the squid. However, everyone seemed to have their ‘go-to’ banana leaf place when asked.

“For that matter, it was not something accessible to many. That’s the gap I saw and I decided to do something about it. With that in mind, I found that not only does such a cuisine have a vast local market potential, but also as a commercial F&B concept primed for introduction to the world stage,” Lim adds.

In 2017, he began to look into the feasibility of turning BLC into a commercial F&B concept. Lim joined hands with his cycling-buddies-turned-business-partners, Aaron Gan, Griffin Yong and David Velavan, who is also a chef for BBro, and together, they developed a casual, quick-service restaurant model specialising in BLC.

For this venture, Gan decided to quit his career as a corporate banker to devote his full attention to BBro. "His journey into F&B was like mine where I had no experience in F&B operations prior to the Boat Noodle franchise which I sold off before going into the BLC business," Lim says.

The Boat Noodle brand was founded by Lim and his wife who is of Thai descent. They jointly grew the brand and franchised it before partially selling their equity in the brand to Toridoll Holdings Corp of Japan in 2016.

The recipe for success is to always understand what customers want and need, rather than what can be sold to them, he points out.

Lim says the prospect of the F&B business is bright.

Lim says, “Always be generous to customers. We never let them leave feeling not full enough and at the same time, have a lot of empathy for our colleagues and partners who work hard to build the brand.”

On its expansion drive, he says BBro currently has 30 strong outlets across Peninsular Malaysia. He says the target is to grow the outlets to anywhere between 80 and 100 in the country by the end of 2025.

He believes that 300 to 500 outlets nationwide are achievable, as the company’s business continues to grow sustainably according to its own internal 10-year expansion plan.

“This would position us favourably in the market, giving consumers a distinct and preferable alternative to over 10,000 mamak shops,” he says.

Furthermore, he adds, “Our pop-up concept test store in Perth, Australia, has been operating since 2021 and we have learnt a lot in modelling a leaner workforce concept, while still serving the similar delicious BLC.

“With the increasing interest in plant-based and vegetarian cuisine worldwide, and the positioning of such cuisine as a healthy and flavourful option, this augurs well for BBro as we look further to other geographical territories for expansion, including the UK and Australia, which are significant curry-eating societies.”

On another note, Lim says the prospect of the F&B business is bright. He foresees greater introduction of faster, new concepts into the market as the world reopens for travelling.

He says dining out will continue to be the preferred option for the wider consumers with the resumption of domestic and foreign travel, social activities, celebrations and open houses. Meanwhile, he says online deliveries will still remain a convenient option.

Lim stresses that “with the global reopening of economies, the time is also ripe for local brands backed by a strong brand name and proven concept to expand and flourish in other geographical markets.

“This is because the younger generation of consumers worldwide are highly inclined to try out new tastes and concepts before adopting them to become mainstream, especially with the confluence of global cultural exports and social media influence.”