LILING ONG

With three successful restaurants under her belt, LILING ONG believes her hands-on leadership has gained her a loyal work family who will see her through aggressive expansion plans, she tells Annabel Tan

Liling Ong cuts a sophisticated figure in a chic black dress, with nary a strand out of place in her centre-parted hair, which is softly pulled back into a sleek ponytail. At first glance, one would never guess that in the first six months of opening her first restaurant Cicheti, this former lawyer was working both front of house and behind-the-scenes, doing everything from cleaning floors to washing dishes and scrubbing toilets. Six years and two more establishments later – mod-australian restaurant Fynn’s opened in 2016; Bar Cicheti is a sexy pasta and wine bar in the buzzing Keong Saik district that has had rave reviews since it opened last year – the 32-year-old is still as hands-on, to a rare degree in the average restaurateur.

She credits this management style for Cicheti’s success – achieved despite her starting the business with zero experience in F&B, a cutthroat industry where nearly half of all establishments shutter within the first five years.

In 2011, after moving back to Singapore from London where she had studied and worked as a lawyer, she found herself missing the hole-inthe-wall Italian restaurants she had frequented in London. “These restaurants had great food, a great vibe and were not super pricey. They’re good for a date night but also good for dinner with your family,” she says. “We just didn’t have a restaurant like that here, and we started Cicheti because I wanted that for Singapore.”

With her savings and startup capital from her father Ong Yew Huat, the former executive chairman of Ernst & Young Singapore and Cicheti’s only investor, she left the corporate world to open an Italian restaurant with her cousin and chef co-owner, Lim Yew Aun.

Her age and lack of experience made it a struggle to hire the right talent for the specific kind of service and environment she wanted to build in the beginning. “Not many people wanted to work for a young 26-year-old. We had no brand, no reputation. I was meeting a lot of people but they just weren’t up to standard.”

Ong had to take on much of the backbreaking work and run the restaurant floor herself. She learnt how to work a point-of-sale operating system and how to open and close a restaurant, and was clearing tables while constantly problem-solving during service.

“After doing that for six months, despite how difficult it was, I started getting great people working with me. The people that I had approached eventually approached me, and said ‘We love what you are doing, we’re willing to leave our jobs and build this with you.’ In this industry, you need to earn the respect of other people. And I realised that they liked working with me because I was there every day, essentially fighting it out in the trenches with my team. That was how I would hold on to my employees.”

Creating an optimal work environment for her staff is something Ong also prides herself on. She believes “you have to work for your team; your team doesn’t work for you.”

She often sends her employees for training, and exposes them to different parts of the business, like taking front of house staff to marketing meetings. She also rotates staff between her restaurants and encourages them to dine for free at them. “We want them to experience things on the other side as well,” she explains. “I think it really just is what you do for your team and the extra things you add on to help them grow in a professional capacity.”

“I made a promise to myself that I’m only going to stop when I feel that I’m on top of my game and I truly feel I’ve done the brand justice”

This creates what Ong describes as a family culture in her restaurants, which has helped her in picking the right people for her team. “I think when you live and breathe your brand so much, when the right person walks through the door, you just kind of feel it.

“And even if that person doesn’t end up being 100 per cent, it’s nature and nurture,” she reasons. “Are we providing them with the right environment to grow and flourish? Are we using their skills to their maximum potential here? If the answer is no, I have two other restaurants I can move them to. I never fire someone – I always move them around and give them an opportunity in a different part of the business. There had been instances where I moved a waitress to the kitchen, and she loved it. So, it’s just a matter of finding the right opportunity for the person.”

She adds: “I know that my success is their success. I think when you look at your team and see them evolving, being professional, happy, and better versions of themselves than when they started out with you, that’s when I really feel like we are doing something right.”

Not only have many of her employees been with the company for three or four years, but chefs and staff from other restaurants have also approached her, wanting to work for her. “That is one of the best feelings I’ve had in my career thus far.”

AIMING HIGH

Being decidedly hands-on has come with major sacrifices in her personal life. She splits her time between Singapore and Hong Kong, where she lives with her husband of two years. Since the advent of Bar Cicheti in May 2018, Ong has been on more than a hundred flights, shuttling back and forth weekly or fortnightly. “I want it all,” she says. “I want the marriage, I want the business, I want to see my dog, I want it all.”

For the time being though, she sees her team more than she sees her loved ones. Even her parents, whom she stays with when she is in Singapore, know that they have a better chance of seeing their daughter at work than at home.

“My dad literally just called me before this interview. He said, ‘Where are you tonight? We need to talk about something.’ So he’s coming to have a glass of wine later.” Her semi-retired father, now chairman of the Singapore Tyler Print Institute, is her biggest mentor. Ong, the oldest of three siblings, aims to emulate his steady, focused approach in his career.

“He had only ever worked with one company his entire career. That discipline in doing one thing, but doing it really well until you’re the best of the best, is something that I really admire about him. I’m very much his daughter, which is why no matter how tough things get, the minute I started this restaurant, I made a promise to myself that I’m only going to stop when I feel that I’m on top of my game and I truly feel I’ve done the brand justice.”

Ong has received offers to open restaurants in Hong Kong, Vietnam and Cambodia, but has turned them down to focus on growing the Cicheti brand here. She plans to open one restaurant a year here over the next three years, with the next one slated for late 2019.

“I find it so incredibly rewarding when I’m standing in one of my restaurants and I look around and everyone is just having the best time. I didn’t go into this business knowing that I would really feel this way. But as the years go by, and with each new restaurant, that feeling just gets stronger and it’s addictive. It’s like a natural high.”