An Awfully Chocolate Success Story & A Dream Come True

Here’s a story that will warm the cockles of your chocolate-loving heart and have you lunging for that bar you were saving for the moment when everybody else has gone to bed so you wouldn’t have to share it.

Lyn Lee was a lawyer living in Singapore in the late 1990s, stuck in a 9-5 treadmill of a job that brought a salary in and kept her safe in many ways but didn’t suit her temperament or her lust for life. Cue in a big percentage of the human race here, lawyer or not “Hey, that’s just like me.” And don’t forget all the people who slave at jobs that don’t pay enough to keep them safe, who are also caught in the same dilemma. And who don’t know how to get out of it. From personal experience I know that when you feel trapped it’s easy to believe that if you can’t do something to immediately change your circumstances you might as well do nothing at all.

Here’s where Lyn and a group of like-minded friends did something different. They got together regularly to bounce ideas around of something else they could do with their lives. They didn’t come up with anything but they didn’t stop. So what was the point? The point was, they left the door open.

At the same time this was going on, Lyn was kind of obsessed with finding a dark chocolate cake that had no synthetic flavor and that she could consume without feeling sick afterwards. She trawled Singapore looking for one with no success. She couldn’t believe it. Such a cosmopolitan city and not one single perfect dark chocolate cake?

Hey, why not make one and sell it! It was just a joke at first. When you hear people talk these days about going into business, it’s all about business plans and market research and facts and figures—dry, dead serious. Dead boring. Lyn wasn’t interested in any of that. She and her friends started playing around with recipes, making cake after cake—and eating it! They weren’t even really that serious. From successful but disgruntled lawyer to baker and purveyor of one type of chocolate cake? Ridiculous!

But they kept at it, and messed around in the kitchen for a year, making up recipes. Nothing too scientific, just having fun. Eventually they got it right. The dark chocolate cake that sent them to heaven and didn’t make them feel sick afterwards.

It was still a dumb idea. How can you open a cake shop with only one cake? What if nobody wants it and you’ve got nothing else to offer them? There was nothing sensible about the idea.

Lyn did it anyway. Full of enthusiasm and determination—and  passion for her perfect cake—she opened a shop in 1998 and called it Awfully Chocolate. Her family supported her but nobody expected her to succeed. Yeah, we all know that kind of support. Setting up shop in Singapore was hard; rents were high, competition fierce, businesses came and went at an alarming rate. Lyn was told she was naïve, that she couldn’t just sell what she wanted, it would never work. She had to figure out what other people wanted because that’s what business is about.

Yada yada. Her whole approach was un-businesslike. Everybody believed she was doomed to failure. Three months max they gave her.

They were wrong. For a start Lyn didn’t have any competition at all! And it seems she hadn’t been the only one looking for that perfect dark chocolate cake. Within three months business was booming. And that first shop was just a very unglamorous box. Lyn didn’t advertise, either. In 2004 she opened her second shop. Awfully Chocolate is still thriving and now has franchises in Singapore, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing, Gangzhou, Hangzhou, Nantong and Wuhan. With two products. Chocolate cake and Chocolate ice-cream.

It also has two offshoots now: Nine Thirty by Awfully Chocolate, a restaurant and dessert bar, and Everything With Fries, a cafe.

Lyn Lee broke all the rules, not out of mindless rebellion or stubbornness, but because they didn’t appeal to her and they didn’t make sense. She had a decent career but she needed something more in her life and she listened to her heart. She took it seriously enough to get together with friends and talk about it. Then she had fun with an idea.

Then she did the difficult thing. She flew in the face of everybody’s sensible opinions, established wisdom and well-documented tenets of how to establish a new business. Yet Awfully Chocolate succeeded where high profile, heavily funded shops with sophisticated marketing sometimes fail. Encouraging stuff. But perhaps the most inspiring part of all of this for me is that money and greed were never Lyn’s primary focus and they still aren’t.

“Our philosophy is simple & unique. The focus is not variety but quality. Our product line is deliberately limited—even today. We don't advertise (if we have to pay to say we're good, we're not that good). And we don't hard sell. We let you discover Awfully Chocolate your own way.”

2015 New Year Resolutions

I love the beginning of January. It gives off a sparkly aura of space, the year ahead stretched out to infinity. It’s a day when you can legitimately, if legitimate is what you need, believe that you can relax, there’s plenty of time for everything. As for the notion of getting older, it’s a far away fantasy, it ain’t happening today. It’s going to be 2015 for a long, long time. Oh yes.

That figure rolling over again is months and months away. At the beginning of January a month seems like a very long time and you’ve got 12 of them for heaven’s sake!

Pause. OK 12 isn’t such a big number, better stick to 360 odd. Forget about the months; think about how many days you’ve got. Another Pause as imagination gets out of hand and an image of numbers running down faster than the speed of light intrudes very rudely. Probably best to forget about the numbers altogether. 

Alright, where was I? Ah yes, in fantasy land. It’s also a day when you can make yourself a bunch of promises and believe you’ll keep them. It’s all about faith, the beginning of January, yes I can! Yes I even want to!

Right. I roll up my metaphorical sleeves. Where should I start? Well, I discovered one thing I can’t do and get away with it, no matter what day of the year it is and that’s eat a yummy fluffy omelet for lunch then follow it up with a delicious cup of hot tea and an ecstatically orgasmic slab of dark creamy melt in your mouth chocolate. Hmm, my taste buds had a field day but my digestion didn’t. If you get my drift. Okay, so why not make that one of my New Year Resolutions?

Hmm. Maybe I should just give up eggs. They’re kind of prosaic, and no matter how good my omelet is it doesn’t really melt in my mouth or stimulate my imagination, and I’m a writer, so I have to take that into account. My career is a serious business.

Ha! You see, the beginning of January is a very special time, a time when creative thinking comes into its own.

But as quickly as it came it went. I sit and stare at the screen, suddenly bereft of words. Rather wish I hadn’t finished that slab. Then I slap my forehead! I bought two yesterday.

Actually I bought four. Ah well. In for a penny in for a pound. Definitely not having an omelet for supper. Definitely going to start running tomorrow. Or the next day. Or next week or next month. Or if I find I’m too busy – being creative, you know – I can do it next year. Next year’s just around the corner.

No, I haven’t been drinking champagne, I promise. Are you kidding? Champagne, omelets, hot tea and dark chocolate? Even I’m not that nuts.

Champagne, indigestion and silliness aside, I only have one New Year’s Resolution. Some time ago I watched an old episode of Grey’s Anatomy where the character Meredith said:

“Benjamin Franklin said never put off till tomorrow what you can complete today. But the thing is, we have to sweep today’s possibilities under tomorrow’s rug until we can’t any more, until we finally understand for ourselves what Benjamin Franklin meant.

That waking is better than sleeping. That knowing is better than wondering. And even the worst failure, the most intractable mistake beats the hell out of never trying.”

It’s true. Well, it’s true for me. Nothing is worse than the mind-numbing, heart deadening, soul freezing limbo of doing nothing. So my resolution is to make this a year of action and fly in the face of fear of flying. Oh hang on, I’ve got another - resolution, I mean; carry on eating yummy smooth melt in your mouth dark chocolate - because it’s good for you and feeling good when you eat it is very good for you - just not in combination with omelets.

23 Cool Things to Do or Not

1. Use your head and listen to your heart.

2.  Aim for being imperfect. You'll probably succeed. And success is good for you.

3. Make rules and then use your head, listen to your heart and if your rules don’t apply any more, toss them. When you’re making new ones, use your head, listen to your heart.

4. If you’re going to speculate on the future, make sure your speculations make you happy and optimistic about life and you and everything. If they don’t, find something else to do other than speculating. (Hint, see 7, 11, 12…)

5. Avoid smugly spiritual people. In fact, avoid smugly anything people.

6. People who believe they’re better than you usually have a tremendous skill you don’t have – bullshitting themselves.

7. Snuggle up as often as you can to a furry animal that loves you and wants to be snuggled up to.

8. The word anal sounds horrible because it is horrible. When you see it disguising itself as a human, run as fast and as far as you can.

9. Do something new for God’s sake. And yours.

10. Bored is angry.

11. Let yourself fall in love once in a while. And have sex. Sex is good for you. At least I think that’s what somebody said to me once.

12. Eat dark chocolate more than once in a while. Especially if the sex thing isn’t happening. Mind you, if that’s the case, there’s always the other option… Have the chocolate afterwards. Or before. Or during.

13. If you want a face lift, to hell with all the smugs who say you should learn to love yourself for who you are.

14. If you want something you can’t afford, find a way. Try to stop short of robbing a bank but if you must, then be Hollywood about it and don’t get caught. Hey, you can even write the book or the screenplay and sell it to George Clooney. If you don't know how to write, here's my number...

15. Get the heck out of whatever one horse town you inhabit in some part of you. Jump on that one horse before somebody else does and ride on out of town.

16. This whole business of worshipping at the altar of balance is getting out of hand. Go on, take a risk; get unbalanced now and then.
17. Which would you rather have on your tombstone: “she was always soooo nice to everybody” or “damn bitch drove me crazy sometimes”.

18. If there’s something you don’t like about yourself find a way to change it. If you don’t want to be bothered… Oh. I got nothing for you then.

19. If somebody bullies you, clock them.

20. Too much insurance = not enough living. It's a proven mathematical formula discovered in the tombful depths of some Egyptian queen or other. Or was it Euclid? Darwin? Well, whether they said it or not, I just did.

21. If you're feeling blue be kind to yourself. Whatever you do, lecturing yourself into a false state of blissful happiness is neither listening to your heart nor using your head. Blue is blue. Better to cry and have somebody hold you or snuggle up to a furry animal that likes it and loves you. Pretty soon you won't be feeling blue any more.

22. Take up the hula hoop.

23. It’s much more fun to be sassy than overly well-mannered. On the note of fun, have some. Have a lot. Throw balance right out of the window on this one.