It may be slightly over 20 years since The Soup Spoon was born, but for one of its co-founders Anna Lim, the memories from the early days of the business are still “very raw and fresh”.
She eventually took the leap to quit her job and started The Soup Spoon. The company began as a home-based business, but the trio later invested S$250,000 to open their first retail outlet in Raffles City in June 2002. What followed was a journey of trials and tribulations, with several learnings along the way.STARTING FROM THE GROUND UP
“In all honesty, we could blame it on SARS. But I will say that it was naivety and a lack of market research on our part in thinking that children and families were our target audience. We were dead wrong,” Lim admitted. While Campbell’s invented the canned soup in 1895, “beyond that, no one has actually done anything else in the soup category”, Lim continued. “There are a lot of mom-and-pop shops selling soup around the world, but there’s nothing at the scale of how Starbucks transformed the whole business of coffee.
She then took up a sourdough nutrition and digestibility diploma course with Vanessa Kimbell, a specialist sourdough baker who runs The Sourdough School. QR codes are located throughout the cafe for visitors to learn more about the health benefits of various menu items and ingredients for sale.
Soups delivered without an iconic orange spoon anymore... they should rebrand themselves as Soup Cup.