No F&B experience + opening in MCO. Yet, Fowlboys became a motherclucking success

If you heard that two guys with:

• No F&B experience,
• Watched YouTube videos for recipes; and
• Didn’t realize their grand opening coincided with the first day of MCO,

…decided to start a chicken burger business together, you likely wouldn’t be wrong in thinking that Fowlboys would have collapsed faster than a house of cards at a Shakira impersonation contest.

But yet, Johann Razali and Shafiq Saiful Aznir (Shaq) didn’t just survive; they expanded their business from Shaq’s apartment kitchen to a 40-employee operation with one brick-and-mortar shop and 2 cloud kitchen (more on this later) outlets. We caught up with them at their cloud kitchen outlet in Ampang to hear the story of Fowlboys, which led to this writer (internally) asking “What have I been doing with my life????”

They didn’t know how to make fried chicken when they started

Johann and Shaq met through mutual friends in 2017. At the time, Johann was in events and Shaq, who was in branding, attended one of them. They became friends, and one collaboration led to discussions for another. They just didn’t know what.

Johann had a passion for cooking, and a chance visit to a fried chicken-cum-streetwear cafe during a trip to Sydney gave him the idea to capitalize on the fried chicken trend in Malaysia.

“The fried chicken component brought me back to my Uni days in Arizona, and the streetwear component was something we had a mutual interest in, so I brought the idea back to Shaq.” – Johann, to CILISOS

Shaq did some research and realized that fried chicken was on the up-and-up in the region, and they had their next collaboration.

All they had to do was to figure out how to make fried chicken. No serious, the conversation literally went like this:

Cilisos: Did you know how to make buttermilk fried chicken before you started?

Shaq: *Starts uncontrollably laughing*

They were introduced to Euwie from Pun’s Ice Cream (closed in 2021) who gave them a crash course on what goes into a sandwich and, from that point, Johann spent a month in Shaq’s kitchen testing recipes…which he found on YouTube

“The Western and Asian palettes are quite different. If you follow any recipe online, you’d get a pretty decent chicken sandwich. But we weren’t satisfied. We wanted to create something that would turn heads. We’d take different concepts [to create something unique].” – Johann

Interestingly, their startup capital was only RM1k, which was used for testing ingredients and branding.

They chicken winged most of their business

According to Shaq, Fowlboys was always meant to be a fun side project. They initially sold burgers to friends, getting feedback on taste, presentation, and selling prices. Even the decision to go with burgers was because bone-in chicken was harder and took longer to cook in Shaq’s apartment kitchen. But eventually, they felt they were ready for the next stage of their plan – pop-up stalls at public events.

Except, the day they planned to launch March 18th 2020, which coincided with…

I was still happily cooking in the kitchen not thinking much about anything, then the announcement came out. Shaq was like, we’ve already come this far so why not go on to to a full delivery model and work out of his kitchen?

At that point in time, I’m already spending every day in the kitchen, it made no difference… until we realized the gravity of what that truly meant.” – Johann

Because they weren’t a proper shop, many food delivery services were (at the time) out of the question. Essentially, they manually took preorders a day in advance on Whatsapp, which Shaq would compile into an Excel sheet while Johann marinated the chicken.

The next day, Johann would be frying and assembling sandwiches while Shaq helped out AND ran up and down from his apartment sending the orders to delivery riders. And yes, the apartment was an oily mess.

“[At the end of each day] we’d be dead and looking at the mess in the kitchen. It’s funny looking back at how far we’d actually come.” – Shaq

According to Johann, their initial limit of 20 burgers kept expanding as word of mouth spread from friends to friends-of-friends. That was when they knew they were on to something more than a side project.

As the orders mounted, they initially hired Johann’s sister to help out and, later, her friends as well. At this point, Shaq’s apartment was on the verge of exploding so they knew they had to move to a proper kitchen.

Fowlboys aimed for the the stars, and landed in the cloud kitchen

After 3 months in Shaq’s apartment, Fowlboys moved their operation to a proper kitchen space in Segambut owned by Curbside Cantina. Things were going well at first, but then orders started blowing up. Johann thought Shaq worked some marketing magic, but Shaq hadn’t done anything… although someone else did.

“Someone posted about us on TikTok. It was our first viral break […] That weekend was pure insanity. We had like 15 grab riders waiting outside and it was chaos in the kitchen.” -Shaq

That was the start of Fowlboys becoming the tiktalk of the town, eventually getting chatter on other social media platforms as well.

Six months in, they knew they were outgrowing their kitchen space. They didn’t feel comfortable heading straight for a brick-and-mortar store (sebab mahal) so a cloud kitchen seemed like the perfect alternative. Basically, cloud kitchens are like co-working spaces for F&B brands focusing on deliveries which often come with different perks and services. They settled on one called KitchenConnect.

“We were really attracted to the tech part of KitchenConnect. I thought their choice of locations were brilliant.” – Shaq

As a geeky aside, we were taken on a short guided tour of the KitchenConnect space during our interview at The Grange @ Ampwalk in Ampang; and the tech part Shaq referred to became clearer behind the scenes where KitchenConnect’s system basically coordinated each outlet’s orders with their delivery riders, while keeping tabs on wait and prep times. Essentially, it gave each outlet a detailed view of how efficient they were, and consolidated their orders across different delivery brands so owners don’t have to pecah kepala tallying everything up at the end of the day.

Despite now having an actual physical outlet in Subang, it looks like Fowlboys will still be engaging cloud kitchens for the foreseeable future:

“KitchenConnect is a good incubator when it comes to testing out a new market, [like this] Ampang outlet. If it goes well, then we might open up a brick and mortar. It’s a very risk-adverse move la I feel.” – Shaq

Their success wasn’t Luck, it was cLuck

Again, if you looked at how Fowlboys started up, you’d likely be surprised at how successful they’ve become – though it’s arguable that none were more surprised than Johann and Shaq. However, one thing they wouldn’t say is that they got lucky.

“I don’t want to say that we’re lucky because saying that undermines the hard work the team has done. Luck is effort meets opportunity.

Opportunity did come… Shaq was sharp enough to see how this product was up and coming in the region. You match that with the team that’s willing to put in the work, nothing’s impossible.” – Johann

The duo are still learning more about the F&B business through books and YouTube videos, but when we asked if they would have run things differently knowing what they know now, both their responses were immediate:

“Now that we think about it, in no way was it a good idea. But I think that’s kind of part of the reason Fowlboys became what it is.” – Johann

“I personally wouldn’t have changed a thing.” – Shaq