Local eatery goes global

Local eatery goes global

Dewi Anggraeni, Contributor, Melbourne, Australia

The newly founded Indonesian Business Forum -- Melbourne (IBF-M)
has been vigilant. It promptly took advantage of Sukyatno
Nugroho's visit to Melbourne by inviting him to address a
business seminar.

The real purpose of Sukyatno's visit was to lend moral support
to the franchisees of EsTeler77's third and newest outlet in this
city, Surono, and his wife Puspita, on their official opening
event in late August.

In the seminar, Sukyatno was in his element, playing fast and
loose with his audience and the media; he knew where to reveal a
"secret" and where to be elusive, where to be "irreverent" and
where to be 'humble'.

The man is obviously media-savvy and knows it, too. You can be
moderately irreverent when you are new on the scene, and
nonchalantly humble when the humility cannot hurt you.

He gives the impression of someone with a great deal of
impulse and gumption, who follows his intuition. As you spend
more time chatting with him, however, you realize that there is
order in the chaos he presents on the facade.

Sukyatno operates on a different level from that on which an
MBA graduate may feel comfortable.

He can be reactive then proactive in hardly a blink. He reacts
to a seemingly bad situation and while staggering backward, spots
an opening miles away, and recovers his stance without hitting
the ground.

In 1982, after having his loan applications rejected by
several banks, Sukyatno was determined to prove that he could
succeed without their help.

"We started selling in a tent. I'd leave home at five in the
morning to buy all the necessary ingredients for es teler (a
drink made of various types of fruit in a special syrup topped
with a mountain of shaved ice). And everyday we'd never have any
leftovers," he said, adding, laughing, that the main ingredient
being ice, even if there were any, it would have melted anyway.

Things were not plain sailing, nonetheless. Sukyatno and his
crew had to shift each time the location was allotted for
something else.

The continuous shifts only strengthened his resolve to
succeed.

"When you learn to run fast, you become very fit," he said.

In 1987, when EsTeler77 had developed into a more
comprehensive restaurant business, and Sukyatno had learned about
franchise operation, he decided to implement it himself.

Predictably, he improvised a lot. "I couldn't do it by the
book, because there weren't books around in Indonesian about
franchise business then," he said, adding, "and there weren't
that many notaries who were well-versed in drafting franchise
contracts, either."

Convinced that franchising would become the new way of doing
business, in 1994 he brought that brand into more upmarket
plazas.

Like many businesses, his was affected by the May riots of
1998, but not defeated.

Sukyatno went to Singapore to set up business.

"I went to Pasir Panjang market myself, in working shorts, to
shop for ingredients. Then I went to Marina Square and Orchard
Road to hand out flyers. I'm very grateful to the Indonesian
domestic helpers there who responded spontaneously to my flyers.
They knew the name. They came in droves. It was they, who
launched the business in Singapore."

Now the company has seven outlets in the Lion City, and one in
Malaysia.

This is the year to establish its foothold on Australia's
Melbourne. Sukyatno recalls how for weeks he sat in cafes in the
busy Swanston Street, listening in on conversations of passersby
and concluding that there were enough Indonesians who would make
up his clientele.

The second outlet followed shortly, in the inner suburb of
Malvern.

Sukyatno has an established quality control system to monitor
the 250 outlets all told, in Indonesia and overseas. They had a
pool of monitors who conduct spot checks on the outlets. Apart
from that, the outlets' daily stock takes can quickly tell tales;
if there is a gaping discrepancy between the volume of sales and
cash intake, they will investigate the cause.

"And we always follow up complaints," he said.

Sukyatno celebrates being a graduate of the school of hard-
knocks, but does not necessarily disparage academic education.
His own children go to university. He concedes to the necessity
to understand business management theory, especially in today's
business world.

Are we seeing the product of a singular determination to
succeed combined with an irrepressible optimism? An inherent
business intuition and luck, as well. And luck is what the IBF-M
has yet to find ways to harness.