Singapore is a not an easy place to start a food business. With thousands of hawker stalls selling delicious dishes for just a handful of dollars, convincing someone to spend SGD$16 for a bowl of noodles at lunchtime is not the easiest sell.

But Chris Tan and his partners at Buta Ramen have done exactly that. And they’ve been recognized as the number one ramen place in Singapore and kept it going for 3 years now.

But how have they succeeded in such an intensely competitive environment?

By thinking like engineers. With backgrounds in engineering, the team thought about their venture differently from most food entrepreneurs. I spoke to Chris when I was in Singapore and learned their story.

Fit the concept to the location.

A typical food business story is to start with a concept and then find a location.

Chris and his partners aren’t typical. They did it the other way around. They first found a high foot-traffic location in the heart of the Central Business District. Then they decided on ramen, served with tasty pork.

Why ramen with pork? They had a passion for great meat. And it was unique compared to other eateries in the area (sandwiches, Italian and other Mediterranean fare).

But most importantly, ramen could be done in the very limited square footage they secured.

Demand is spiky, so keep dishes moving fast.

The hot food business has very spiky demand. A huge chunk of your business comes in at mealtime hours. So it’s important that when that demand hits, you put out dishes quickly.

Part of the solution is inherent to ramen. It’s a dish that allows for ingredients to be prepped ahead of time. A good bowl of ramen needs minimal food prep once the customer has ordered.

But a less obvious part of this is before the order even comes in. It’s menu simplicity. Like a good user interface, the Buta menu doesn’t flood you with choices. It gives you four dishes. That’s it.

First, this makes customer decision making faster. It is far less likely that someone gets to the front of the line and is still stuck in indecision.

And second, a simple menu means fast prep time. Only a certain set of ingredients are needed and there is only so much complexity that the chefs need to handle. When under time pressure, it makes a difference.

Don’t sacrifice quality for speed.

Let’s be clear. Buta Ramen is not a McDonald’s factory, sacrificing quality for the sake of high speed production.

Like good engineers optimizing an outcome given constraints, the Buta Ramen team worked within the constraint of maintaining high quality food. The meat marinates for 24 hours overnight. They conduct egg cooking experiments to perfect their technique . They go to conferences to see what else is cooking (figuratively and literally).

Quality product is the ticket to play. The efficiency is what gets you profit.

Brilliant buzz marketing beats buying ads.

Buying ads is a terrible way to market a hot food business. Instead, the Buta team capitalized on the fact that the business lunchtime crowd is a repetitive one. Office workers tend to go to the same area each day at lunchtime. So they went ahead and created lines out the door on day 1.

How? They gave away meals for free. Full size portions of ramen (not skimpy sample sizes). This created a ridiculous queue. And because they were running out, they handed out tickets to everyone in line who missed a free meal, so they’d come back the next day.

For every office worker who dashed out those days to grab their usual lunch, just seeing the ridiculous queues ensured they made a mental note to stop by.

Think different.

Having spent time in the food sector, I can safely say that the Buta team is not typical – hence a large part of why they’ve been able to beat the odds in an intensely competitive sector. If you’re in Singapore, drop by. And if you’re not local, then here’s something to salivate over.

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GS Dun builds new ventures and products, such as CakeAB, the easy-to-use pocket calculator for AB tests. Our name is short for “get sh** done”, so while we can talk the talk, we prefer to keep our meetings short and just get on with it.