The F&B industry is one of the most dynamic yet competitive industries in Singapore. Many times, we hear friends or families eagerly sharing with us their dreams about setting up a cafe or restaurant. And that is perhaps why we see new food establishments springing up every day and F&B franchises being sought after day after day.

Earlier this month, we attended the Food and Licensing Asia 2011 at Marina Bay Sands. It is great to see some of our fairly young (by that, I mean 5 years or less) F&B customers introducing their F&B concepts to enthusiastic international visitors!

Are you an aspiring F&B owner? Check out these promising F&B brands:

With so many F&B franchise opportunities to choose from, it is essential to gather these key pieces of information from the franchisors:

• Franchise Fees
• Royalties and ongoing A&P Fees
• Legal Fees
• Leasing Fees and Security Deposit
• Initial Investment (including opening inventory, food equipment, furniture and fittings etc)
• Working Capital Requirement
• Projected P&Ls
• ROI and Profitability

Sorry for the long wait! As promised, I am posting up the mooncake recipe to share...

Have you got your kitchen equipment and utensils ready?

Here is the list of ingredients you will need:

• 45g peanut oil
• 135g top flour/plain flour (sieved)
• 1 tsp alkaline water
• 380g lotus paste
• 4 salty egg yolks
• 85g golden syrup
• Egg for eggwash

Mooncake Festival is almost here! We embarked on our first attempt at baking traditional Cantonese-style mooncakes.

I had intended to make fresh lotus paste but laziness got over me...so we used ready-made Lotus paste bought from Gim Hin Lee.

Macarons are sweet lil' things made with just three ingredients: egg whites, ground almond and sugar. Sounds easy? Not quite. There is the issue of overmixing to worry about, the uncertainty of whether the 'feet' develops/is right etc etc.

One of the common questions our customers ask us is "Can you use a convection oven to bake macarons?"

I say......"YES!" I decided to try it out myself to dispel any believes that macarons can only be baked in conventional/deck oven.

Pardon the poor-photos because they are taken with my mobile phone but here are the yummy French macarons fresh from UNOX convection oven: