These 3 young S’pore hawkers put cheese in a curry puff. They made S$500K in their 1st year.

What The Puff produces up to 1,500 puffs a day

Singapore’s hawker scene is not short of curry puff stalls. But when Lim Yuan Ming, 24, and his older brother Brandon, 29, decided to start one, they weren’t trying to out-tradition the traditionalists—they wanted to give the curry puff a modern twist.

Growing up around their parents’ Teochew porridge stall in Bedok, the brothers had a front-row seat to the realities of the hawker grind. That experience shaped their decision to build something simpler, more scalable.

With their friend Oh Chin Jie, 31—a trained cook—they pooled S$10,000 and launched What The Puff at Changi Village Hawker Centre in Dec 2024.

One and a half years later, they have three outlets, a central kitchen producing 1,500 puffs a day, and have made S$500,000 in revenue for 2025, all while Yuan Ming is still finishing his finance degree at SUSS.

We spoke with Yuan Ming to find out how they got here.

Hawker blood runs in the family

The Lim brothers are no strangers to the hawker trade. Their parents have been running Lao Er, a Teochew porridge stall at Block 216 Bedok Food Centre, for over a decade. Yuan Ming grew up helping out—cashiering on weekends, loading toppings on porridge, and absorbing the rhythms of the trade without realising it.

But Teochew porridge, with its 20-dish daily spread prepared from the early hours, wasn’t the model they wanted to follow.

It was their father who pointed them toward curry puffs, even suggesting they experiment with adding cheese to the curry filling—a slightly unusual combination, partly inspired by the cheese-topped curry ramen trend.

When we tasted it, we thought, oh my god, it actually works. Then we just went for it. Lim Yuan Ming

Once they had the idea settled, they brought in Chin Jie, Brandon’s friend from National Service, who had gained culinary experience at salad bar chain The Daily Cut.

Chin Jie took the lead on recipe development, while Brandon focused on operations and Yuan Ming handled the backend work, including administration, payroll, and supplier relations.

Six months to get the puff right

What The Puff currently sells five flavours, all wrapped in a thick, crumbly, old-school curry puff crust: the Original Curry Puff and Sardine Puff at S$2 each, and the Cheesy Curry Puff, Black Pepper Chicken Puff, and Char Siew Chicken Puff at S$2.50 each.

Simple enough on paper—but getting there was anything but easy.

R&D began at home in Oct 2024, two months before the first stall opened, and continued well after.

The trio spent weeks eating curry puffs with friends and family as unofficial taste-testers, producing up to eight iterations a day. After perfecting the basics, the Cheesy Curry Puff alone went through about 10 variations before they were satisfied.

The pastry proved the hardest part to nail, as small changes in ingredients, temperature, moisture, or even wind could affect the result. It took nearly six months of iterating before the recipe was finalised.

“We just ate a lot of curry puffs—to the point we got a little sick of them,” Yuan Ming said with a laugh.

From one stall to three

Although the early days at their first outlet at Changi Village were slow, it taught them a lot about business.

Sales were modest enough that the three founders spent over a month making the puffs themselves daily before hiring their first employee, and none of them drew full salaries for the first six months.

Soon enough, their determination paid off, with returning customers spreading the word about their funky puff flavours.

By late Jan 2025, they reinvested S$15,000 from the first stall’s earnings to open a second outlet at Block 216 Bedok Food Centre—just two months after their launch, and in the same hawker centre where their parents run Lao Er.

In Jul 2025, they opened a third outlet at Punggol Coast Hawker Centre in Punggol Digital District, funded with S$20,000. It has since become their strongest-performing outlet.

One surprise for the team was that curry puffs aren’t just a breakfast item. When they trialled extended evening hours at Punggol, demand stayed strong well past their initial 3PM closing time, prompting them to adjust operating hours accordingly.

“Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong”

But running a business is not without its ups and downs.

In Mar 2025, Brandon and Chin Jie were called up for reservist at the same time—right when Yuan Ming was in the middle of his exams. He ended up running the business largely alone for two weeks, working 14-hour days. Along the way, he also had to contend with a delivery failure and a refrigerator breakdown that ruined 400 puffs.

Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. Now I know to have a plan for it. Lim Yuan Ming

The team also eventually decided to close their Changi Village outlet.

Despite being their founding location, its distance from central Singapore made logistics challenging, and foot traffic was affected by nearby roadworks. In Jan 2026, they closed the stall and opened a new outlet at Haig Road Market & Food Centre instead.

Financial setbacks have also been part of the journey for the team.

Beyond the hawker centres, they brought What The Puff to GastroBeats, a food and music festival, earlier in 2025. It gave them room to experiment with flavours, introducing festival-only specials like chilli crab, mentaiko tuna, and truffle mushroom.

However, the pop-up came at a cost as they took a financial hit of around S$8,000. Yuan Ming doesn’t see it as a failure, though.

“It gave us the chance to figure out if events are something we want to pursue,” he said. The experience also connected them with other entrepreneurs further along in their journey, offering a perspective they couldn’t have gotten from behind a hawker counter.

45,000 puffs a month & counting

Recently, What The Puff made its first CBD appearance, expanding beyond the heartlands in late May. Through a collaboration, the brand is now stocked at Hypha Provisions at Raffles Place MRT.

The most significant operational milestone, however, came in Dec 2025, when What The Puff set up a central kitchen: a 100 to 200 sqft space staffed by four to five people to scale production.

Most of the puffs are now prepared there and distributed to outlets for frying on-site, with the Punggol outlet remaining the only one handling end-to-end production.

This has increased capacity to around 1,500 puffs a day, translating to roughly 40,000 to 45,000 puffs a month across all outlets. At S$2 to S$2.50 per puff, it is not surprising that the brand hit S$500,000 in revenue in 2025.

However, the central kitchen has also introduced new cost pressures, with manpower emerging as the biggest expense. The team is now exploring automation for certain parts of production, though Yuan Ming is careful not to lose what makes the product distinct.

Currently, all puffs and fillings are still made from scratch.

The dough is beaten the day before, then portioned and wrapped from around 8AM until early afternoon. “The texture you get from hand-forming the edges is not easily replicated by machinery,” Yuan Ming said. “That matters to us.”

Wrapping speed, at least, has improved dramatically—from 30 to 45 seconds per puff in the early days to under 20 seconds now.

What The Puff also makes sure not much goes to waste. Unfried puffs are kept frozen until needed, so the team only fries what they expect to sell. For damaged or leftover stock, they’ve partnered with food redistribution platform Food Tool, where excess puffs are listed at lower prices for anyone who wants them.

10 stalls in five years

For now, the trio prioritises stability over speed. The team wants to tighten production consistency, refine the menu, and get their systems solid before pushing further.

They have their eye on the West, North, and South of Singapore, as online orders have already been coming in from those regions, and a fourth outlet is planned for the second half of 2026. Their five-year goal is 10 stalls islandwide.

Collaborations are also on the horizon, though Yuan Ming is waiting until production is stable enough to take them on properly.

For anyone thinking of getting into the hawker scene, his advice is to expect chaos, plan for it anyway, and don’t underestimate how taxing the environment is. 

“It’s hot, oily, and things will inevitably go wrong,” he said. “But the government gives a lot of subsidies and grants to help people come in. If you want to try it, try it now—before the pressure to play it safe gets too loud.”

• Find out more about What The Puff here.
• Read other articles about Singaporean businesses here.

Also Read: “As good as fresh”: This S’pore startup cracked year-round Mao Shan Wang & sold 4K boxes in 5 mths

Featured Image Credit: HungryGoWhere/ @springtomorrow via Instagram