Singaporean influencer Xiaxue has launched her own nasi lemak brand.
She announced her new venture, Pink Coconut Nasi Lemak, on Jan. 3.
According to her Instagram post, she has been working on this "for months" with virtual F&B menu creator Global Cloud Business.
Speaking to Mothership, Xiaxue said she started Pink Coconut after a friend who owns food manufacturing company BoBo (yes, the brand that does fishballs) asked if she'd be interested in starting an F&B business.
While she created the recipes for the dishes, the factory helped to scale up the production and communicated with the various food delivery platforms.
Currently, Pink Coconut is available on major delivery platforms including foodpanda, Deliveroo and Grab.
Pink coconut is not halal-certified and the nasi lemak doesn't contain any pork or lard.
Here are the four different sets:
Original Chicken Wings Nasi Lemak (S$9.90)
Prawn Paste Chicken Wings Nasi Lemak (S$9.90)
Boneless Chicken Cutlet Nasi Lemak (S$9.90)
Beef Rendang Nasi Lemak (S$12)
Each set comes with two heart-shaped fishcakes, peanut and anchovies, a serving of sambal chilli and a portion of hae bee hiam (dried shrimp sambal).
If you're wondering why the rice is pink, it's been coloured with a hint of beetroot juice.
Sunny side up eggs can be added for an additional S$2.
Pink Coconut also has Super Star Sambal Petai (S$5.20).
Not your typical F&B business
Pink Coconut doesn't run like your usual F&B business.
Unlike traditional F&B businesses where food is delivered from the main restaurant, Pink Coconut pre-packs the food from the factory and sends the safely packed and frozen ingredients to various vendors all over Singapore.
When customers order the nasi lemak, these vendors can prepare the food from their kitchen for delivery.
Currently, you can get Pink Coconut nasi lemak from locations like: Bedok North, Lavender, Marine Parade, Bishan, Paya Lebar, Punggol (Northshore), Holland, Little India and Yishun.
Xiaxue said: "Right now we don't have many vendors yet but we're hoping that more will come onboard."
While Pink Coconut does have some quality control measures in place, Xiaxue acknowledges that it is difficult to make sure everything is "100 per cent" up to standard.
"Of course, if we have customer feedback then we will correct [them] accordingly. I will let the vendors know that this is not up to standard and if the vendors are really bad then of course we will stop working with the vendor."
Looking to improve
If you're familiar with Xiaxue, you'd know that she has quite the reputation online.
It goes without saying that one of her concerns when launching Pink Coconut are people who will leave bad reviews for the sake of doing so.
She said: "If you're doing that, can you please don't because it's not really just me [that you're affecting]. You're ruining [the business] of all these innocent vendors who are just trying to make a living. If it's nice, say it's nice. And if it's not nice... give me your feedback, I will improve."
"We are trying to improve the recipe as well so I hope people will give chance because right now there's of course some teething problems."
So is it good?
The rice is obnoxiously pink. It is fragrant and tastes decently creamy, like most nasi lemak.
We enjoyed eating the nasi lemak with the sambal chilli, which was a nice balance of salty and sweet and not too spicy.
Can't say the same for the hae bee hiam, however, which overshadowed the coconut rice.
The rendang deserves a special mention. It was tender and flavourful, but we'd probably only buy it when we feel like we deserve it because S$12 isn't very easy to part with.
Overall, it reminded us of nasi lemak you'd get during school camps. Decent and nostalgic, almost.
Top image from Livia Soh and @xiaxue on Instagram.