“IT WAS UNTHINKABLE AND NOBODY WOULD ACCEPT IT”
“It was just a eureka moment that something can be built, or a platform can be developed, so they don’t go to waste,” said the 33-year-old.
At the time, Wong was completing his second degree in law at the National University of Singapore but had a budding interest in entrepreneurship. Later, he was joined by Kenneth Ham, a like-minded friend from church who was reading computer science in the same school then. Today, his 32-year-old partner in crime is Treatsure’s chief technology officer.
“We crashed some entrepreneurship classes in school back then. Even though I was in the law campus and Kenneth was in the computing faculty, we would go over to the business school,” Wong explained. Initially, they envisioned Treatsure to be a platform for surplus groceries, but their excitement soon proved short-lived.
“I did surveys by knocking on doors in my neighbourhood, and people were just not interested. They were concerned about getting food poisoning. Back in 2016, it was unthinkable and nobody would accept it. So we moved on to F&B and, true enough, the response was better.”
Buffet-in-a-box got its big break when Grand Hyatt Singapore came on board – a major vote of confidence after Treatsure was rejected by several potential partners.