Singapore’s Zouk Group is a nightlife company with staying power. The dance-music pioneer has been raging since 1991 and recently signed a five-year lease extension for its Zouk club complex on River Valley Road. Zouk is the longest-running nightclub in Singapore and continues to be the company’s most successful business, so there’s no reason to stop the party anytime soon.
But what will greatly shape the future of Zouk Group is its restaurant expansion. In June, Zouk Group opened The Plump Frenchman with chef Lorenz Hoja, who previously ran the kitchen at Singapore’s two-Michelin-starred L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon. The success of The Plump Frenchman, a lively bistro that offers accessibly priced French classics like coq au vin and eggs with ratatouille in the Guoco Midtown development, has made Zouk Group think about different ways to offer guests everyday food.
Zouk Group CEO Andrew Li tells Observer that he’s not chasing Michelin stars at this moment. He believes his company is capable of that, but many high-end restaurants in Singapore have closed, and Zouk Group wants to capture the middle of the market.
“Looking at the macroeconomics globally and especially here in Singapore, we wanted to take his type of cooking but make it really affordable to the masses,” Li says of Hoja and The Plump Frenchman. “With the high rent in Singapore, we needed something that could do high turnover, but we also wanted to have quality produce and French fine dining technique.”
One strategy for Zouk Group’s expansion is to “take The Plump Frenchman and expand through different verticals,” Li adds. “We’re thinking that we’re going to do The Plump Spanishman and The Plump Chineseman and look at different cuisines that we can grow under that brand.”
Zouk Group, which was purchased by Hui Lim in 2020, has also partnered with buzzy sandwich shop Korio.
“We think it is a very scalable brand,” Li says. “It has a very small footprint of 500 to 600 square feet, so it’s a no-brainer for us to make sure that this becomes a scalable concept.”
Li is now looking around the world for restaurants that he can open in Singapore. (New-school Los Angeles bistro Camphor did a pop-up at Zouk Group’s Here Kitty Kitty speakeasy during Singapore’s Formula One week last year.) It’s important, Li says, for his company to have an ownership stake in these future deals. He wants to make it clear that Zouk Group is looking for “strategic acquisitions” and is ready to invest in growth.
One advantage that Zouk Group—with venues in Singapore, Malaysia, Tokyo, Las Vegas and Los Angeles—has is its ability to roll out outposts in different cities. At Resorts World Las Vegas, for example, Zouk Group has a dining portfolio that includes modern Asian restaurant Fuhu, sports bar/arcade Redtail and the Famous Foods Street Eats food hall to complement its Zouk nightclub and Ayu dayclub.
Zouk Group’s Southeast Asian presence includes the franchise rights for the Five Guys burger chain in Singapore and Malaysia.
“We don’t want to do too many license deals or franchise deals anymore,” Li says. “It’s important that we own part of the brand, so that we’re increasing its IP value and increasing our footprint.”
At the same time, Zouk Group isn’t one of those nightlife groups that wants to bring in prominent chefs and change what they do. At The Plump Frenchman, Hoja is cooking his food on his terms.
“There have been times in the past when Hui and I have kind of tried to dictate to the chef what he should cook, and we’ve learned the painful way that that never really works out,” Li says. “We said to Lorenz, ‘We know this is your baby.’”
Zouk Group is also being careful about its partnership with Korio, which just opened a new location next to The Plump Frenchman in July. Prior to teaming up with Zouk, Korio founders Myron Tan and Shaz Henshaw operated their tiny sandwich shop themselves.
“I think they have a really strong brand here locally,” Zouk Group senior director of operations David Long tells Observer. “We’re working with husband-and-wife founders who never had any real plans to expand the brand. There are, of course, challenges in trying to make it a scalable business when they’re used to running it as a single owner-operated outlet.”
Part of this challenge for chefs and entrepreneurs is about streamlining operations, creating efficiencies and realizing that you can’t and shouldn’t do everything yourself. Zouk Group is here to find restaurants it loves and provide an infrastructure that allows them to thrive and grow.
“In the past, I would say that getting a Michelin star was a top priority,” Li says. “But really for us right now, it’s being able to take the concepts we have and make them more sustainable business models that are able to scale. I think that’s the most important part.”
Working with Five Guys, despite the burden of a high franchise fee, has taught Zouk Group a lot about quality control and maintaining brand standards, Long says. Li and Long are humble enough to admit that the company is still learning as it goes.
“We’ve failed quite a few times in the past,” Li says. “There’s definitely a lot of experiences that we’ve learned from. When we did our first Fuhu, we brought in Alvin Leung from Hong Kong. He’s called the ‘Demon Chef,’ and it was extremely high-cost to have him in as a consultant. We had these huge ideas of getting this Michelin-starred chef and putting him with this brand.”
And then they realized that the casino customers at Resorts World Genting in Malaysia were more inclined to just eat a bowl of noodles and go back to gambling. Knowing your audience is key, which is something Zouk Group has clearly figured out with its nightclubs.
The Zouk nightlife complex in Singapore is three clubs in one. Phuture, the smallest club, is student-oriented; it’s a place where 18-year-olds buy a ticket, enjoy affordable drinks and dance to hip-hop. The main club is Zouk, where guests in their early 20s rage during EDM sets from world-famous DJs like Galantis, Illenium, Diplo and Paul van Dyk. There’s bottle service here, but the music is the main reason revelers visit.
Then there’s Capital, the most elite of the clubs.
“The people there are in their early-30s to mid-40s, and that’s basically all table service,” Li says. “You’ve got Champagne rituals, a lot of bottle service and a small dance floor. It’s not really about the DJ. It’s more about the community and having people of that caliber around you.”
“There’s a life cycle of a typical nightlife customer,” Long adds. “I think introducing them to multiple concepts, with Capital being the final one, creates a sense of community. A lot of the people know each other. There’s a familiarity.”
Adding restaurants to the mix can extend this life cycle, of course. Zouk Group wants to meet its customers where they are, day and night.
One thing that’s striking about Phuture, Zouk and Capital is how happy and in the moment guests are. At many nightclubs, you’ll see bored people looking at their phones or social media addicts filming every moment. When I walked through Zouk Group’s clubs on a busy Saturday night, I didn’t see many phones. And when I filmed the DJ booth at Capital, I looked around and realized that there wasn’t a single person on the dance floor with their phone out. People come here to dance and drink and lose themselves, and many of them linger outside after leaving the club because the point of this is gathering with old friends and making new friends.
I was still thinking about all this a few days later when I was dining at The Plump Frenchman and saw guests giggling and ordering extra wine on their lunch break. It was a scene that showed Zouk Group’s strengths—because what Zouk Group really excels at is creating an escape and creating joy.
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