JOHANN RAZALI
SUBSEQUENT TO PRESENTING JOHANN RAZALI
with a Men of the Year award in 2021, we now have the honour to welcome him into The A-List family. Johann co founded Fowlboys, a fried chicken and burger joint in the bustling cities of Kuala Lumpur and Subang Jaya. When he’s not busy overseeing the daily operations of the restaurant, you can find him in the golf course or in the range, pu ing the green and practising his swings.
WHAT IS SOMETHING UNEXPECTED ABOUT YOU?
Oh wow, I think I’ve previously told you that I was a ballroom dancer right? Hmm, I may seem like an extrove or an outgoing person and I generally am, but I’m also a person that really enjoys being alone. It’s through my alone time that I come up with the best ideas. But I guess if there’s something unexpected about me that the readers don’t already know is that I can speak Mandarin. Since my mum’s Chinese, specifically Cantonese, so naturally I grew up learning to speak the language. My dad’s also fluent in Hokkien, he’s Malay but because he grew up in the No hern pa s of Johor, he picked it up. I guess having three different dialects in the family is something people don’t usually know about me.
WHAT’S IT LIKE RUNNING A RESTAURANT?
In all fairness, I think running a restaurant takes a lot of commitment to say the least. It’s not easy, it really takes everything out of you everyday. There are days when you’ll get a serious phone call about something as early as five in the morning or even in the middle of the night, you never know what’s going to happen. There are the good bits to running a restaurant but there’s also the other side of business that people don’t talk about—days where you have to make sure you’re garnering enough sales to make payroll, ensuring that you stay a good paymaster to your suppliers and vendors, and that’s just pa of running the operations. On top of that, I’m also in charge of all the food in Fowlboys. I constantly have to be forward-thinking about food as well, keeping myself in line with what’s going on around the world and what the market trends look like in the next six months. So personally, I have to constantly be on my toes, consuming information from everywhere.
HOW DO YOU FEEL ABOUT BECOMING A PART OF THE A-LIST FAMILY?
It’s definitely exciting, but also pa ially nerve-wrecking to be honest. It’s one thing to be selected for The A-List; it’s quite another to do so on top of being recognised with a Men of the Year award just prior. It definitely becomes a larger story to tell my friends and family.