F&B franchise here, roughly 15-30% slower. Though heard of some franchise restaurant getting up to 50-60% slower so unker just cukurrr as long as can pay off loan.

Major drop from FP, Grab & Shopeefood platform though.

Waiting game right now for myself as small time employer, because of rumors of further OPR hike, 20% employers EPF and further increased in min. wage (+ subsidy cuts post-election later). If math really don't check out may have to reduce headcount.

Quite scary hearing other businesses reducing left & right, less & less employment & money in the market.

Sorry, can you elaborate the word in bold? Don't quite understand.

Anyway IMHO the worst of them all is EPF. Employee take home salary is the same, but business operation cost increases causing business to past that cost to consumer, causing even lower purchasing power as price increases. Definitely not the right time when the current economic downturn still doesn't have the light at the end of the tunnel. Not to say things like those aren't a good thing, but the timing couldn't be worse.

But I paling kesian is retiree / pensioners. They're mostly on static savings / pensions but these past few years of inflation gonna eat them up. It's also very difficult for them to find jobs at those age, whether because of they themselves or the employers (can't teach an old dog new tricks stigma) so they don't have much options.

F&B franchise. I think you're mixing up employees & employers, and yeah, that 20% definitely benefit government more (or rather cronies, since they can quietly lobby for that investment, but let's not go there). But it not benefiting employees is technically correct, companies would just deduct it from someplace else (lower benefits, insurance, etc.), those that can't will reduce headcount, etc. Things can't be conjured out of thin air.

I do worry for it cascading exponentially, any potential trigger of price shock makes me quite anxious not just from business but societal perspective as well (new taxes introduction, subsidy removal, floated petrol, etc.).

I wished we'd reach a plateau soon, atleast things have room to equalize.

Holding on brother, some raw mats costs are really hitting it hard (see cocoa price, wew lads).

Significant revenue drop for the last 3 months, and things are still not looking well next year in terms of business costs.



for context, in F&B but last 3 months (Sep-Nov) is worse than fasting month (Mar-Apr)

Predicting that most of cost increase next year going to come from Budget 2025 alone though. Honestly if the budget was empty I'm ok with no price increase.

Last major raise was Early 2022 (almost 3 years already), around RM1 adjustment on average.

Early this year got <RM0.50 cents on small selection of items (choc-based products due to cocoa price surge), but that's only around 15% of the menu.

No, no & no. I guess I should also mention, residing in neighborhood mall, one of the more affordable supermarket chains serving grocery needs.
Mall foot traffic declined noticeably so it's affecting every tenants also, some saying almost as bad as Covid years.

Anecdotal evidence also seeing less full grocery trolley carts during payday periods, but that's only personal sampling size so confirmation bias I guess.

In the reds. Breakeven is around +-13.5k (not incl. business loans).

It's the neighborhood mall, no other ones within the area unless you go out of the township. Not deep in KV where there's a mall every other kilometers.

Planning to clear business loan at start of next year so will free up some cashflow.
Also it's not exactly red every month (yet), just trending downward & only recently went into the reds is all.
Looking to be a close-to-breakeven year for me, which I guess is rather ok since some business I know went belly up as early as 2022/start of 2023, including bigger ones.

Cashing it off now means selling at a loss since alot of people are dumping theirs too (and do what with the money? everybody knows expendable income is down across the board).
Challenge of running a business in these times, and the gomen policies are just really adding more nails to the coffin, for businesses & customers alike

Hardly an offensive question. Beverage-based FnB btw.

Hard to say exactly, depends on a few factors:
1. How deep in the reds are you?
2. Any capital injection available? (Incl. personal money, if comfortable)
3. How far can you downsize? (Haven't had to do any headcount reduction yet for now).
4. Any light at the end of the tunnel that makes you feel it's worthwhile to struggle on? (Not much hope under Madani for now, feels like Bidenomics)
5. How will the OPEX increase with respect to next year's inflationary pressure?

Was very conservative during EPF withdrawal's market injection post-covid, built up some reserves atleast but not much.

Pure revenue. Won't be posting if it was pure net profit going down while still above 5 figures

The month-to-month drop with no sign of stopping and I'm already in the reds (already went below my breakeven) is what worries me.

Can take few months losing here & there, but next year punya consumer spending power also predicted to decrease also.

Kinda at the point of acceptance lol, times really have changed. A conversation I had during interview:
Me: How long you plan on working (nowadays I just ask from the get go cos they're never staying).
Her: Quite long.
Me: Can you clarify?
Her: Atleast 2 weeks.


Our concept of time is just different I guess. Still an issue when they're quitting though, even after explaining about notice period during interview,
most of them insists on not serving notice (one parent even paid for her kid).

Another gripe with the employees situation are actually other employers IMO, while min. wage is being raised, some of the store around me I know is not even paying the 1.5k monthly for their employees / no OT / whatnot.
One of my employee punya sister worked in this China-brand chain beverage, she's only paid around RM200 extra what I'm paying him yet she's working 12 hours, 6 days a week.

Anyway onboarding & standardization of tasks and routine need to be tiptop to bring the employees up to speed. Managing what we can actually manage is my approach.

Below breakeven no, had to topup a lil bit. My case employees are needed cos need to follow mall rules (open 365 days a year), I'm not healthy and/or available ALL the time.

Sometimes you profit sometimes no, hopefully less of the latter. I'm being optimistic since everywhere I read nowadays even big businesses mau belly up, so it's not a unique situation.

This post has been edited by keybearer: Dec 6 2024, 11:20 PM