Meet the owners of After You Dessert Café and Big Bad Wolf Books

Meet the owners of After You Dessert Café and Big Bad Wolf Books

You probably heard of After You Dessert Café in Bangkok. They are one of the most popular dessert places to visit in Bangkok and they went for IPO on December 2016. After You Café Dessert is officially 10 years in business. For Big Bad Wolf Books, founder Andrew Yap and Jacqueline Ng created one of the largest book fairs in the world since 2009. They are currently on the 8^th year and growing to other Asian market such as Thailand, Indonesia and Sri Lanka.

We were invited for an interview session with the owners of After You Café Dessert and Big Bad Wolf Books last week. Of course, we were excited to meet the owners of two very successful companies in their own way.

We are huge fans of After You Café Dessert and we blogged about their food as we love their food. Almost every time when we travel to Bangkok, we will visit After You Dessert Café and we really wanted to know more about the owners.

We sat down with Mheng and May, founders of After You Dessert Café and Andrew Yap and Jacqueline Ng, founders of BBW Books.

We started off the interview with a short introduction of ourselves and we asked Mheng what inspired them to open After You Dessert Café.

Mheng told us that this is not his first venture with May and they had a seafood restaurant before After You Dessert Café but it didn’t work out. However, they see the opportunity in opening a dessert café as there wasn’t any good ones 10 years ago.

The idea of the dessert café comes from May. May loves Japan and she spotted the toast in Shibuya, Tokyo. She wanted to recreate the toast and named it as the Shibuya Toast and make it the superstar product of her café. The main reason why she wanted the toast as it is huge and it is good for sharing and people to get together to eat.

The Shibuya Toast is one of the most popular desserts in Thailand. Many who tasted their version of Shibuya Toast tried to replicate it and sell it in other countries like Singapore, Malaysia and other places. The Shibuya Toast is the main signature food in After You Desserts from day one and ten years in running.

After You Dessert Café introduced the ‘kakigori’ ice shaving dessert on the seventh year. This means they have consistently depending on star product Shibuya Toast for seven years! With the kakigori part of the menu, May told us that there will be new exciting flavours coming soon.

What’s interesting about kakigori is the ice is not made from water! They have their own secret recipe to create the thin ice shaving and this is mind blogging. May created all the food in After You Dessert Café with her own research.

That’s why there are limit to After You Dessert Café pop up store in Big Bad Wolf Books exhibition as all the ingredients are imported from Thailand every day. Even the ice for kakigori is imported from Thailand. Talking about quality control, After You Dessert Café committed to give the best to its customers where ever they are.

How did the owners of BBW Books and After You Dessert Cafe met?

We asked Mheng on the expansion of After You Dessert Café in Thailand.

We also asked Mheng will After You Dessert Café opening in Malaysia and Singapore?

If you watched the video, Mheng and May is planning to open in Malaysia and Singapore soon. There are many paper works and permits to be involved as they plan to export the ingredients from Thailand to Singapore and Malaysia. For the partners for these two countries, Mheng and May is still deciding who they should worked together with.

Lastly, we spoke about the Crumb Ice Cream, a spinoff by After You that was closed in Central Embassy. Mheng and May told us that they will revive the brand one day as there are not many good sundae dessert cafes in Bangkok. It was a tough decision for them to close down Crumb Ice Cream a few years ago but it will make a comeback in the future.

Thank you, Andrew Yap and Jacqueline Ng of BBW Books for bringing After You Dessert Café to Malaysia. 

After You Dessert Café is open from 12:00noon – 1:00am every day throughout the Big Bad Wolf Fair (8 – 18 Dec 2017). This is the last weekend you can visit After You Dessert Café pop up store in KL as well as the BBW Book Fair.

Wilson Ng