we put up the merchants’ products or
services on the site, we would try it out
for ourselves first as part of our quality
assurance process to our customers,”
chuckles Christopher. “The proprietor
of this waxing salon along Orchard
Road that shall remain unnamed
wanted to push his Boyzilian services
and because we wanted to keep our
business promise, we decided to put
our man bits on the line!”
Christopher remembers being led into
the fairly spartan room by the business
owner and was waiting for him to
walk out so that Christopher could get
undressed. The man never left. Instead,
he briskly told Christopher to get
undressed. Turns out the person doing
the waxing was the owner himself.
“I felt victimised. I recall staring into
the bright light hung at the ceiling
while the man did the first pull of the
wax and thinking that this was the
worst thing I had ever done in my
life,” Christopher shares.
Dinner later on was a silent affair.
Neither of them uttered a word
throughout the meal.
BECOMING SEAFOOD
AND MEAT MAESTROS
On the bright side, there are
no longer anymore awkward
experiences or services to test-drive
with GoFresh, Christopher notes with
relish. Instead, he and the team get
to try all sorts of beef and seafood,
in the name of quality control.
Christopher’s and Karl’s taste buds
aren’t complaining though.
They’ve also garnered a wealth of
insider knowledge about seafood
and meat that the normal lay person
would never have known. During the
photo shoot, Christopher correctly
identified three different cuts of meat
that were being used as props simply
by eyeballing them, an impressive feat
for someone who had only been in the
business for four months.
in the way humans feel, is a matter
that’s still being debated.
CONQUERING FEARS AND
THE COMPETITION
Nevertheless, the GoFresh team does
gets calls from many bewildered
customers who did not realise that
their seafood would literally be fresh
out of the water. “I have a lot of
interesting conversations with people
who have bought our seafood! They’ll
call and say: ‘Your lobster is still
alive’ and I would laugh and say: ‘Yes,
we intended it to be that way’. Then,
they will ask how they’re supposed to
kill it,” says Julian.
Now, the next step in their
adolescent GoFresh journey is to
convince the Singaporean public,
weaned on physical supermarkets
like Cold Storage and NTUC
FairPrice, to make the switch to
buying their meat and seafood
online. Christopher and Julian
understand that hurdling the mental
barrier is a challenging task but
they have made significant progress
since they first launched in June.
In the first month alone, their sales
grew 300 percent week on week.
For those genuinely interested to know,
the most humane way to kill a crab is to
stick a shark skewer between the eyes
at the front, where the brains are, and
stir for a bit.
Lobsters are a trickier
proposition due to their larger
claws, which makes grabbing
their bodies a potentially
painful experience. Julian
recommends going from
behind, out of sight
of their vision, to
hold the lobster.
Then, put them in a
freezer for 10 to 15
minutes – lobsters
are cold-blooded
creatures and
being in a cold
environment results in a lower
body temperature and a deadening of
the nervous system. Take the lobster
out after the period of time has
passed, put it on a chopping board
and aim the point of your sharp knife
between its hindmost legs before
plunging in. Slice through until the
head to split the lobster into half.
Their two advantages: restaurantquality ingredients delivered at
a time convenient