This Finance Sophomore Started Booming Side Hustle Making Curry Puffs

In their brand-new kitchen, underneath a neon sign that said “puffing good time,” sibling duo Lim Yuan Ming and Brandon Lim showed me how to make the perfect curry puff.

The brothers — who run the Singapore-based curry puff business What The Puff — rolled out the pastry dough, stuffed it with a curry filling, pleated the edges, and fried it golden.

The result was a crispy, buttery, and savory pastry that drew a 15-person queue to their newest hawker stall in Singapore’s northeastern Punggol neighborhood when Business Insider visited.

Lim, a 23-year-old finance sophomore at the Singapore University of Social Sciences, started the curry puff business in December. Business is booming — he’s already expanded to two other outlets.

Juggling college and a nascent business in a country known for a high food and beverage business failure rate is no easy task. He’s had to forgo his social life, take calls from suppliers during classes, and work until his hands ache.

But he’s hoping the business takes off so well that he’ll never have to set foot in an office.

Raised by hawker-loving parents

Lim said his mother and father supported him juggling a food business and his studies. His father even suggested he drop out of college to build up What The Puff.

“It’s unconventional advice, but he’s a pretty unconventional man,” Lim said with a laugh.

His parents have always been in the F&B industry, he said. They ran a laksa steamboat restaurant in the 2010s and later opened a Teochew porridge hawker stall when Lim was in middle school.

He helped with cashiering and loading toppings on porridge on the weekends.

Selling thousands of curry puffs daily

Curry puff, he thought, was a good place to start for his own venture. The beloved snack is relatively easy to make, with simple ingredients.

Lim, his brother, and his brother’s friend opened the first What The Puff outlet in Singapore’s far eastern Changi neighborhood, near the country’s busy airport. They pooled SG$10,000 to start the stall.

Now, they have three hawker outlets and four staff. Lim said that on an average day, they sell about 1,000 curry puffs across all their outlets, with daily sales of between SG$1,500 and SG$2,000, or about $1,165 to $1,555.

I tried the SG$2 original curry puff — filled with a chicken, potato, and egg curry mixture. The stall is known for its less traditional flavors, like cheesy chicken and black pepper chicken.

Despite the roaring sales, it’s backbreaking work, Lim said. Brandon said he reaches the stall at 1 a.m. to start prepping the dough and the fillings before opening the shutters at 7 a.m.

They’re constantly wrapping the puffs from 7 a.m. till they close at around 3 p.m. By the end of the day, their hands hurt, Lim said.

After closing the store, he returns home to balance the books, pay bills, and clear administrative tasks.

Juggling college and a booming business

Lim said it has not been easy juggling his business with his studies.

Once, when they unexpectedly ran out of curry puff filling, he had to arrange an ingredient delivery while halfway through class.

He’s also had to forgo extracurricular activities and much of his social life.

“That is the one thing I hate the most, because most of the time I’m busy with work in the day and at night I need to do all my backend stuff, so I didn’t really have a lot of time for going out,” he said.

But he’s decided that he’s not going to drop out of college.

A three-year runway for success

Lim said he gave himself until graduation to make this business work.

“From now to graduation, I have around three years, so that’s my runway,” Lim said. “I have three years to build this into something which hopefully I can do full time.”

While strenuous, he prefers it to a corporate job.

“I like that I can be running errands, doing my degree, and having flexible hours, which feels better than sitting down and being desk-bound,” he said.

His favorite part of the job is when he gets good feedback from his customers.

“It gives me this great sense of fulfillment when people leave good reviews or tell us in person that they enjoyed the curry puffs,” Lim said.