Eight months in, they are looking to set up a retail space to meet the growing demand
When brothers Gary Wong, 32, and James Wong, 31, were growing up, food was always a part of their lives.
They were born into a family of chefs who owned dim sum and zi char shops, although those ventures never took off. Although F&B was, as Gary said, “in our blood,” their family had encouraged the brothers to enter the industry.
That changed in early 2026, when the brothers and their wives became silent A hippopotamusa home-based rösti business operating out of their mother’s flat in Tampines.
We spoke to Gary and his wife, Yiying Tan, about how the family grew the business to sell 150 rosti a day, making between S$30,000 and S$35,000 in monthly income, with plans to open a convenience store soon.
It starts as a retail outlet
James holds a degree in culinary arts from the Culinary Institute of America—one of the world’s most prestigious institutions for emerging chefs—through a joint program with the Singapore Institute of Technology.
Before Mvubu, he worked as an executive chef in a restaurant, which gives him a first-hand understanding of the industry’s demands: long hours, limited pay, and little work for someone else.
That convinced him that he wanted to build his own F&B business.
For Gary, who had spent years in private equity and venture capital, the motivation was different. He saw Mvubu as a side project at first—an opportunity to test whether an idea could work before fully committing to it.
Gary and James’ wives would eventually join the business, but in its early days, Mvubu looked very different. The brothers had not yet sold the rosti.
Their first business was a cai fan (mixed rice) at a small local college, which they found in Jul 2025, selling a changing menu of up to 16 dishes daily.
When schools mandated canteen vendors stay open until 2PM, food was almost always sold during the day. Faced with a choice between going home and cooking another batch, they would fill up, but doing so came with a risk: anything that wasn’t sold by closing time would go to waste, eating right into their already thin margins.
For every dollar of sales we made at the cai fan store, 60% was just food costs. If you don’t sell, you’re screwed.
Gary Wong
The garbage problem pushed them to rethink. Rather than preparing food ahead of time, what if they sold something made to order? Ideally, it would appeal to young college students without requiring them to cook 16 different dishes before dawn.
The answer came from one of James’ first F&B jobs: a brief stint at Marché’s rosti station nearly ten years earlier. The brothers decided to serve a Swiss potato dish at their stall.
And it was the right call. The students quickly started lining up, and the line grew long enough that the principal entered.
To manage volume, the brothers sold 30 units a day, first-come, first-served—and that wasn’t enough.
“It was like the scene at those Pokémon cards in Plaza Singapura,” Gary said.
To escape the constraints of the school calendar
The school kitchen was a success for the rosti concept, but it came with its own problem: schools would be closed for holidays. Long breaks meant that the canteens had no customers, and there was no money to be made.
To fill those gaps and avoid being completely dependent on the school calendar, Gary and James decided to launch Imvubu as a home business in Nov 2025, while continuing to operate the canteen hall.
Although business was slow for the first week or two, with only one or two orders per day, business grew steadily thereafter.
By the new year, the momentum had grown. Media followed, while new menu items kept customers coming back. Orders slowly increased from just a few a day to an average of 100 to 150 rosti daily.
The hippo works out of Gary and James’ mother’s 1,500 sq ft apartment in Tampines, which the family shares. As Gary says, this business is very much a family affair, his wife, James’ wife, and their 70-year-old mother are all involved in its day-to-day operations.
Even so, Gary has not left his job fully, he says he still sees Mvubu as a business that is just starting.
What makes a good rosti?
James’ culinary training shaped everything about how Mvubu approaches the product, from ingredients to cooking. They only use 100% USA Russet potatoes, and everything, even the sauces, is freshly made the same day.
“If we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it right,” said Gary.
Using Russet potatoes gives the rosti a crispy, golden crust while keeping the inside moist and tender, says Gary. More importantly, the brothers have deliberately kept prices affordable: a chicken schnitzel with rosti costs S$12.50, compared to S$35 for the same dish at Marché.
The brothers also experimented with flavors like Salted Egg Chick rosti and Okonomirosti—rosti topped with okonomiyaki sauce, Japanese mayo, and bonito flakes—which became customer favorites.
There are many flavors the brothers want to explore, but the constraints of a shared home kitchen have kept the menu strictly selected for now.
Every new item adds preparation work, ingredients, and storage requirements, while Singapore’s Home Based Business Scheme means they cannot hire workers from outside the family to cope with the extra work.
That said, in a business still finding its feet, the numbers make financial sense.
Without significant rent or overheads, the main cost is ingredients, and those margins are quickly covered. Compared to cai fan a 60% penalty on food costs and a dawn start, running the Hippos from home five days a week gave them room to breathe, refine the product, and build a customer base before committing to a commercial space.
Building a road in front of Mvubu
Given all this, it made sense for the Wongs to close the canteen shop.
Running both at the same time-i- cai fan shop from early morning until 2PM, followed by Mvubu’s evening service and prep work in between—it was hot for the family.
The final confirmation came during Mar’s school holidays, when the canteen was closed, and the team focused solely on Mvubu. The experience confirmed what they already suspected: the rosti business brought strong profits, created less waste, and made better use of their time.
With that, the family decided not to revive us cai fan store lease when it expires in May, we choose to focus entirely on Mvubu.
But Mvubu’s domestic model was always meant to be a stepping stone, not a destination. The constraints of a shared home kitchen have a ceiling, and the brothers know it.
Therefore, Hippopotato has plans to open its first store sometime in 2026, with a second location likely to follow. The customer base it has built makes a compelling case for expansion: the business has amassed more than 200 five-star Google reviews, while customers travel from all over Singapore to get its rostis.
For the Wongs, it is a sign that Mvubu has outgrown the home kitchen where it started.
- Find out more about Hippopotato here.
- Read more articles about Singapore businesses here.
Featured Image Credit: Hippopotato
