During the early days of the pandemic, walk-ins to F&B outlets were strictly prohibited. Having worked closely with the industry since 2013, StoreHub stepped in together with Stripe, to enable a much needed food delivery service that accepts contactless payments for businesses built during trying times.

Fong Wai Hong has no qualms sharing pearls of wisdom quoted by the women in his life, in falsetto. CXpose.tech discovered this when speaking with the co-founder at the sidelines of the Stripe Tour in Singapore

The delivery module StoreHub launched basically powered checkouts and order processing for restaurants and retailers. Without Grab or Food Panda in the picture, restaurants saved 30% of their order value in the process.

Fong Wai Hong

This was something that StoreHub’s engineering team worked on non-stop for 48 hours to build and launch. “Our platform, from not accepting payments, took 20 minutes to integrate with Stripe and begin accepting payments,” explained Wai Hong.

In Klang Valley Malaysia, around two million people have used this food delivery service which is called Beepit.

StoreHub – an operating system for restaurants and retailers

Another by-product of the pandemic and the ensuing lack of staff to man outlets was StoreHub’s QR ordering system. “You walk into a restaurant, you scan your order, and you pay. A lot of these systems were quite big, and Stripe powered a lot of them,” Wai Hong shared.

StoreHub, the solution itself, had started out as a cloud-based point-of-sale system in 2013, that evolved into something much more comprehensive. Today it encompasses inventory management, customer loyalty programs, and even delivery platforms, all of which provide small businesses with tools to operate in a digital marketplace. “We think of it more as an operating system for retailers,” Wai Hong said.

The journey

The co-founder’s entrepreneurial journey began almost two decades ago in Australia when he bootstrapped an online business with his uncle, and exited after reaching AUD5 million in revenue in four years and after ‘more family members got involved.’

“This was in the pre-startups and VCs era. My uncle was a silent partner. But suddenly my aunt was involved, my cousin was involved. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when my mom also started to sit on the board.”

With the firm conviction that there was more value in speaking Mandarin than studying for an MBA, he set out to study the language for 6 months in China.

The China factor

“I went thinking I was just going to spend six months studying Chinese. I ended up staying for two years.”

During his time in China, Wai Hong encountered a philosophy that would influence StoreHub’s core mission. Inspired by Alibaba’s approach, he embraced the concept of “Xiao Shi Mei” or “Small is beautiful.” This powerful idea challenged the traditional focus on big businesses and instead highlighted the potential of empowering smaller enterprises.

“My uncle was a silent partner. But suddenly my aunt was involved, my cousin was involved. The straw that broke the camel’s back was when my mom also started to sit on the board.”

“Especially when it comes to Malaysian chinese businessmen, we always say China man, right? Because they always just chase the money. But Jack Ma was an anomaly. Alibaba was an anomaly. They thought about the most marginalized and how technology can allow us to change the game for this segment so that they can compete on even ground with larger organizations.”

“I’m very contrarian. And I recognized that with technology we can change the paradigm.”

It was also in China that Wai Hong met his future co-founder, Congyu Li, a former Microsoft employee with impressive credentials. Their initial conversation lasted hours and centered not on business plans, but the kind of impact they want to make in this world. “We just talked for almost three or four hours at our first meeting. And it wasn’t even about starting StoreHub.

It was more about philosophy,” Wai Hong remembered.

StoreHub’s Evolution: From POS to Operating System

This meeting of minds led to the birth of StoreHub. The pair began by “writing code in my apartment in Shanghai,” laying the foundation for what would become a comprehensive business solution that today powers over 15,000 retail and restaurant businesses in the Southeast Asia region.

“I’m very contrarian. And I recognized that with technology we can change the paradigm.”

Speaking with Wai Hong, StoreHub’s goal has not changed from its original mission which is to provide small businesses with affordable solutions to manage and grow their operations. Wai Hong explained that in essence, they want to solve problems for the business owner, using technology usually reserved for large enterprises.

“Our first customer had to have its store manager key in data for one hour just to generate a basic sales report.” Wai Hong said adding that this was solved by their cloud-based POS, before they moved on to bigger questions like how to help small businesses understand their customers and create good engaging loyalty programs?

“So, we make it easy enough for small businesses to do that without hiring more resources.” Wai Hong observed that sound and core business concepts like Know Your Customer (KYC), and how to build good customer relationships are important, but simply too hard for small businesses to execute.

“So, our goal is to continue to build more of those kinds of solutions, and even automate it.”

“We have hit rock bottom.”

Wai Hong noted discretionary spending tightening in recent times. The post-Covid expansion has slowed down and in fact, consumer wallets are shrinking because of high interest rates and so on.

Especially now, he believes that there is opportunity for F&B businesses to control the elements that they can, like building a good loyalty system, or improving supply chain and how they track ingredients or select and buy from suppliers.

“They are willing to put in the effort… I mean, you don’t start a business in the midst of a pandemic without determination and a good head on your shoulders.”

The entrepreneur highlighted the importance of eating, sleeping, and exercising well. “I can very clearly see when I’m not managing stress well and all sorts of problems crop up because I am not doing one, or two, or three of these things well.”

At one point, he even admitted that things seem bleak for the F&B industry, “We have hit rock bottom in this space” suggesting that the only way forward now is upward.

He has faith that the cohort of businesses that started during difficult periods like 2021 and 2023 are resilient. “They have thought things through very hard before they started, right?

“They are willing to put in the effort… I mean, you don’t start a business in the midst of a pandemic without determination and a good head on your shoulders,” he concluded.