Meet Melvados' 'Brownie Girl': She tests ice cream and brittle, and launched diabetic-friendly brownies

She is part of Melvados, a homegrown family business that produces a whopping 249 food items from diabetic-friendly brownies to cempedak cake and watermelon sorbet.

As a child, Bandana Kaur grew up test-driving ice cream and cakes. As an adult, she spends her leisure time touring supermarkets in exotic countries like Slovakia. Old friends from junior college still jokingly call her “Brownie Girl” – not a racist slur, but a fond reference to a school fundraising carnival 15 years ago where her father sponsored hit brownies that completely sold out.

Meet this 32-year-old second-generation foodie who is reinventing her family’s business Melvados. An amalgamation of several languages, Melvados means sinfully delicious. It offers Halal-certified desserts, snacks and frozen meals for time-pressed urbanites.

A SECOND-GENERATION FOODIE

Kaur grew up amidst her family food business Foodedge Gourmet. The company was founded by her father Manmeet Pal Singh and his two business partners Raymond Foo and Karl Gunter Ableitner in 2003 to supply meals and desserts to airlines, hotels, restaurants, cafes and supermarkets.

Melvados, the house brand of Foodedge Gourmet, offered the same food items to consumers. But it was then a very small part of the business. It consisted of only one shophouse in Joo Chiat.

The three business partners always hoped to grow it. And in 2017, the perfect opportunity presented itself.

At that point in time, Kaur was working in America after completing her master’s in business administration there on a scholarship. However, that was during Donald Trump’s presidential term, and the fresh graduate said she found herself faced with an increasingly xenophobic and racist America.

“The day after Trump was elected, on my way to work, I passed by a big mall in Boston that was spray painted, ‘Make America Great Again, F*** Off All Immigrants,” she recalled.

“I felt increasingly uncomfortable in an environment where you could sense racism. At work, people would make snide comments with a smiling face saying, ‘Singapore has no jobs? You have to come here and take ours’,” she said.

When she confided in her dad, he urged her to return to Singapore. Come home and help me develop my house brand, he said. So in 2017, Kaur returned home and joined Melvados as brand manager, working on branding, marketing and revamping the in-store experience.

BUILDING THE SINGAPOREAN DREAM

Since the lease of the Joo Chiat shophouse was ending, the company shut down the outlet and moved Melvados to Anchor Point mall. With Kaur and the team working 12- to 13-hour days, the brand had a very successful year.

In 2018, they opened their second outlet at Jurong Point. Two outlets eventually grew into 10 outlets in Singapore, and five in Kuala Lumpur.

From an initial offering of around 20 different cakes, the brand increased their offerings tenfold to more than 200 products. Their most popular product is the festive sampler, a box with 20 different bite-sized cakes popular for parties and gifting. Their beef lasagna is a close second.

“We try to release at least 10 new products every year. R&D is the heart of our business. Every single day, something is being R&D-ed,” laughed Kaur, adding that two of their newest launches are low GI, diabetic-friendly brownies and chocolate chip cookies.

“I have family or parents of friends who are diabetic, and a lot of the food that is available to them is so bland. We felt that they should not eat like they are sentenced to punishment. So we really wanted to create something tasty and indulgent for them,” she said.

To make their signature brownies and chocolate chip cookies diabetic friendly, Melvados uses a proprietary sugar substitute premix.

“This sugar substitute premix allows us to use 20 to 30 per cent less sugar. More importantly, it lengthens the time the sugar is released in the blood. It is certified as low-GI by Temasek Polytechnic – one serving of the brownie a day will not spike your blood sugar levels, making it suitable for type 2 diabetics,” said Kaur.

All items are cooked up in Melvados own factory in Singapore. “We blast freeze all our food as soon as it comes out of the oven at -20°C. This seals in the flavour and nutrients, and stops the bacteria from multiplying so we don’t have to use preservatives,” she explained.

Besides desserts, Melvados’ frozen meal options include lasagne, soups, wraps and meat like tandoori chicken.

A reheating tip to preserve the taste of your frozen food: Don’t just throw into the microwave direct from the freezer. Defrost it well first – put it in the fridge overnight to let it naturally defrost. “This makes the centre easier to cook so that you don’t have to cook it for longer than necessary such that some parts become mushy,” Kaur said.

WORKING IN THE FAMILY BUSINESS

Kaur loves her job. “My biggest fear coming back was that I’d regret leaving my American dream, but until today, I have not,” she said.

Two of her inspirations are her love for family – her father, cousins and aunts also work in the business – and her love for food.

“It’s so much more fun when you go to work and you are meeting your cousins, having lunch with them, chatting, gossiping, and everybody’s equally passionate about building their own brand. That’s very nice.

“In our family, our common love is food. We think about food, we go out and eat food, and we come home and eat food. When we were growing up, the durian truck would come to my grandmother’s house and my family would gather and eat it together. Same thing for rambutan season. All of us associate a lot of our happy memories with that,” she mused.

Another reason Kaur finds it so rewarding to continue her father’s entrepreneurship journey: The newfound sense of control she has over her own destiny.

“When I was in America, my boss, who is also of Indian origin, told me that in an American firm, no matter how hard you work, you will always hit a glass ceiling at some point because of your race and gender. You are very unlikely to break into C-suite, unless you are exceptional,” she said.

“But now, a lot of my success is in my own hands. It is a direct result of how much we work and how innovative we are. I love that because I now have control over my own future,” she added.