As we approach the end of the week, our mini-series is coming to an end as well. To end off our #supportlocal series, we have In Bad Co sharing their story (and an amazing treat) with us! To end off this series with a high, we are hosting a giveaway in collaboration with In Bad Company! 🤩
In Bad Company will be picking a grand winner to win 3 curated craft beers delivered to your doorstep! More details will be up on REFASH’s Instagram (@refashsg) tonight so get your livers ready!
On to getting to know Tim and In Bad Company! 😊
So my role in In Bad Company is that I curate the kitchen and bar menu items. Our team is also made up of Robin who is in charge of marketing and events, as well as Elaine who does sales, events and finance. Under us is the whole team of awesome people who support the business!
The idea of IBC came about when we decided to take up tenancy in a space that we were eyeing for a while. We decided on the name of our bar one drunken night, as 'In Bad Company' encapsulated who we were whenever we got together, and we wanted to have a place where anyone would want to be a part of this fun as well.
We started off by renting the bar space, and shortly after, the food vendor left the premises and we had the opportunity to take over the kitchen as well. So within a short period of time, I closed my previous establishment, The Palmary, and moved over to merge in with the rest of our team to create a full F&B experience at In Bad Company.
Why “Bad Company”?
Bad company is us whenever we get together for drinks, we always do stupid and fun things, and we always have a good time together. We're a team of whacky personalities so what better way to call ourselves bad company than anything? We also wanted to establish a great name for a comfortable dive bar in the Robertson Quay community to attract the people who could resonate with us, and for anyone else who hears about us and our customer's experiences to want to be apart of this!
Hahaha I can totally relate to doing stupid and fun things when I'm with my friends, that's what makes it fun isn't it?! Definitely a smart name, somehow tells me that I can go all stupid and wreak havoc when I'm there 😂😋
Difficulties merging Palmary and IBC
It was quite a crazy nightmare for all of us. For me, it was handling the closing and cleaning up of the previous space, inventory and porting them over.
For our entire team - while all this was happening, we had to continue where the previous food tenants left off. There was already an office lunch crowd in the space, so we had to quickly come up with new menus that would fit our branding and also the price sensitivity of the crowd, operational workflows, additional manpower, the list goes on.... I would insert a laughing with tears emoji here, but also another one that was really crying, haha..That whole process had to be completed within less than a month, so you can just imagine the nightmare of machinery modifications to suit the gas outputs of the space, moving huge equipment, even on operational days. It was a tremendous amount of work back then, but the team managed to pull through and that's one of our proudest moments being in the space.
A month?!?!? I am proud of your team too! 👍👍👍 (Sorry not sorry for the food pics, they just look too good! Good things must share right?)
What makes IBC different
I think one of the things that really helped to shape our direction was that we started off drinking commercial beverages, moving on to craft beers and having our friends who are suppliers in the industry walk us through the process of understanding the vast differences in a commercial and craft beverage.
That experience that we had, helped to shape the way we approach our menu and the experience at IBC. E.g, we train our team to always take the extra step to explain the craft beer culture to everyone who visits our bar (ie. what beers they are drinking, why we use specific glasses for different styles of beers, etc.)
We also strongly believe in building a culture and community that can exist anywhere in any form, and we're not tied down to just the space that we are currently located at.
Also many craft beer bars in Singapore, most don't have a wide variety of food like us. So we are able to capture people of all walks of life, family on the weekends, biker groups from Harley and Ducati who have made us their home bar, young executives, etc.
Events
I would say that IBC has always been built as a business that is by the people, for the people. There is no specific boundary that we set to what kind of parties or events we will hold. As long as it brings communities together, our doors are always open.
One memorable event we hosted was my good friend Jeremy Monteiro's 59th birthday, where we converted our partner's space to become a jazz room for him and his band, and we did a 4-course dinner with wine and spirits, inspired by Jeremy's palette of desires and hosted his fans, friends and family!
So we have events like WTFBBQ, which was a Pink Dot live screening and barbecue at our bar, for foreigners who are not able to access the park. This eventually expanded into a monthly thing where we also did one edition at Bunkerbunker!! , another craft beer bar owned by a good friend of ours. That was a national day party with live DJ sets, national day trivia, outdoor barbecue and of course lots of booze.
Suka Suka Sundays, Dutch Pancake Party, Halloween, Garage Project's La Calavera Catrina's SGlaunch party, 3Eighth's anniversary, Project X, Dormant, are some of the events that we have hosted and partners we have supported as well. I think I'll stop listing them now or else this interview will drag on. haha
Have a party you would like to host, go ahead and slide into In Bad Company's DMs, I'm sure it will be in great hands! (Don't forget to invite REFASH too?!, we sure are a bunch who knows how to party) 😉😋
In case you missed yesterday's feature on Bunkerbunker!!, here it is!
COVID Impacts
CB has caused a very huge impact on everyone, it's pretty scary..
I think we have been coping pretty well? Always stocking up on booze at home to keep the sanity level up, haha..
We have had to shift our business onto digital platforms which were not a core part of our operations before.
The silver lining to this is that we have a lot more time to explore creative ways of reconnecting with our customers through Facebook live sessions, building a seamless UI for our e-shop so that new and old customers have an easy of reaching us and our products, R&D on different food styles that we may not have been able to on normal days, etc etc etc 😂
Our team has a lot of plans for the brand and what we are passionate about, but because of the times we are in, we've had to lower the gears on these plans and to focus on getting our brand through this storm and back onto the road of recovery. One of our top priorities is to prepare the business to be agile enough to pivot whenever necessary, especially now, in the face of a pandemic.
It is a huge challenge, moving that intangible service on the offline front to the online front, which we believe is one of the most important factors. If the social aspect is something that is lacking now, businesses should try even harder to inject that into every aspect of the business.
Team Memories
Best memory - this was something that I asked my team not too long ago when we were having a mini team celebration of our first anniversary. Everyone's answer was the same - It was the day of our launch. People were in the bar from 12pm when we were expecting the crowd to come in later in the day. That crowd eventually turned into over 300 people and the line for drinks ran from our bar all the way out to the carpark! It was so heartwarming that everyone showed up to drink our bar dry 😂😂
Worst experience - I think we've never had any experience that was very bad for us to personally have it off the top of our head - thank God. But if I had to pick one myself, this CB period would be it for so many reasons that almost all business are going through
Menu Recommendations
Every customer comes through our doors with different palettes and preferences. At IBC, we always encourage our team to ask customers questions to better determine what is a suitable food or beverage option for them and to approach the recommendations with an open mind.
If it's a food recommendation, I would recommend going for our Signature Black Angus Beef & Foie Gras Bowl. For drinks, I'd like to believe that there is always something in our fridges for everyone. On the off chance that there isn't, we're always open to receiving feedback from our regulars and doing specials for them whenever they visit us.
In Bad Company, do expect me there soon! You now at the top of my list of restaurants to visit after we are allowed to dine out! Just looking at all the food pics is making me hungry right now! 🤭
Instagram: @inbad.co
We have now come to an end to our #supportlocal series! Do let us know if you have enjoyed this series and if you would like to see more! Thank you for tuning in to our blog this week, see y'all soon! Until then, stay safe and stay healthy! 😊