Cloud-99 fully embraces food truck concept

My regular customers still come back to me but I have more new customers, those who have not seen or heard of Cloud-99 before although they lived around the area (of the previous cafe location). Ooi See Bee

Cloud-99 Ice Cream Cafe (Cloud99) is one such example of undergoing a major business transformation now having better visibility in the local desserts scene.

Operating since May 2013, the brand was bought over by entrepreneur Ooi See Bee back in 2015. Ooi then decided to close the cafe earlier this year and remodel her business into food truck – thus introducing the first Cloud-99 Liquid Nitrogen Ice Cream Truck in August.

Ooi explained that having a cafe specialising in desserts was not exactly ‘a piece of cake’.

“Especially for desserts – how many times can an individual consume desserts in a week? At best, it’s weekly. If not, most consume once or twice a month only,” she revealed to BizHive Weekly in a recent interview. “I feel, for my business, having a cafe is actually a waste of money.”

When running the cafe back then, Ooi also said hiring a new chef to work in the kitchen to expand her offerings apart from Cloud99’s main liquid nitrogen ice-cream and frozen yogurt would mean an even heavier workload for hern.

Also, at that time, Ooi was taking part in events to create more visibility for her business, such as bringing Cloud-99’s ice cream to school fairs.

This was a tiring effort on Ooi’s part, she said, as she had to transport machinery and nitrogen tank herself. Aside from being tedious, the equipment were heavy and Ooi had worried then that constantly transporting around such machineries may eventually spoil her own personal car like the car springs and other parts of the vehicle.

It was when she observed other food trucks such as Noms on Street operating around Kuching that she believed it would be a good idea to transform Cloud-99 into a mobile business.

Step in the right direction

For Ooi, going into the food truck business was ‘the best strategic move’ she had made since taking over Cloud-99.

The first benefit, she said, was a slash in overhead costs involved when running a food truck which was comparatively much lower than operating a cafe.

“Cloud-99’s electricity bills currently with the food truck is minimal, compared to when operating a cafe.

“With the cafe, the bills amounted to approximately RM700 to RM1,000 a month while with the truck, I only had to pay RM6 a day on petrol bill,” she highlighted, adding that this was sufficient to support lighting and machineries used.

As Cloud-99 usually only operates for four hours a day, the amount she earns during that time has exceeded what she earned in a cafe which operated 11 hours a day.

Secondly, unlike renting out an outlet previously, costs of owning her own food truck is significantly lower as Ooi needs only to pay installments for the vehicle.

Mobility has also played a big

part in her decision to go for a food truck, especially when it comes to joining events such as marathons. As mentioned earlier, it had been quite an ordeal for her to lug around her equipment in her car.

Prior to having the food truck and given the amount of machinery required for her to set up to make Cloud-99’s desserts, it had not exactly been feasible to join such events which usually lasted only three to four hours at a time.

Growing visibility

Since venturing into the food truck business, Ooi admitted that visibility for Cloud-99 is higher now. With the trend in the food truck market still growing here in Kuching, she noticed that on the day she officially launched her food truck on August 11, Cloud-99 actually received a lot more new customers.

“My regular customers still come back to me but I have more new customers, those who have not seen or heard of Cloud-99 before although they lived around the area (of the previous cafe location),” she mused.

As a food truck, Cloud-99 has been able to shift its location a little further up, next to Starbucks which is more visible from the main road.

Eventually, once its permit to operate at a fixed location has been approved by the local council, Cloud-99 will shift over to Friendship Park alongside a few other food trucks.

Ooi opined that having a few food trucks together in one location would be beneficial as it would allow customers to try different food trucks in one sitting as opposed to driving to separate locations as is the case now.

While it may be a bit tough because of the lack of space here in Kuching, Ooi still hopes that the council will be able to assist the food truckers with this issue.

More ways to expand

Moving forward, Ooi will be finding more ways to run the business and is even looking into operating in the afternoons. In the meantime, Cloud-99 continues to participate at malls on special occasions with their pop-up store booth.

Ooi will also eventually want to offer licensing for Cloud-99. For the moment, she is looking for partnerships with, for example, restaurants or cafes who would like to provide Cloud-99’s ice cream services in their outlets.

“There’s two choices. It’s either I set up a booth in the cafe or they will license from me, so they can put my ice-cream inside the menu,” she said.

“You have to look for these kind of collaborations because right now, economy is quite bad so you have no choice but to look into different directions.”

Ooi noted that licensing would be the best option given that they will be able to collect royalties from there. For licensing, she is looking outside of the Kuching market as she believed that the capital here is too small to house another food truck with the same brand.

However, if there were ever to be another Cloud-99 in Kuching, the second food truck would have to be situated up further north in a location such as Petra Jaya.

As for expanding to locations outside of Kuching, Ooi opined that Miri would be one of the best options. Following that would be Kota Kinabalu in Sabah. Ooi attributed Kota Kinabalu being a viable option to the high level of tourism traffic that goes through the city and even admitted that should she ever have the capital, to possibly open a Cloud-99 herself there.