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.