Singapore cafe wave not a smooth ride for entrepreneurs

SMU alumni Foo Choo Kiat and June Tan founded Lola's Café in a Kovan housing estate three years ago when they were undergraduates in SMU. The 30-seat café is part of a fast-growing café entrepreneurial scene in Singapore, which sees independent boutique cafés serving artisanal coffee and garnering immense popularity in Singapore due to rising affluence and increasingly sophisticated palettes. Choo Kiat and June recouped their start-up capital of S$100,000 within six to eight months, and hope to replicate the success in their second café outlet, On The Table, launched last year in Pasir Panjang.