Three items on the menu, and thriving

Between November and February each year, I park myself in a small village on Malaysia's East coast for the surf. Warung Pok Mid is one of the regular warungs (restaurant in a shack) I go to for dinner. And I was thinking about the restaurant today and how it's a great example of a side hustle.

Warung Pok Mid is a small cozy restaurant run by local boy Samad, and they make incredibly tasty food. It is always busy, and menu items get sold out regularly.

3 items

The thing is, their menu only has 3 main items: rice with fish, rice with chicken, or beef soup. That's it. Yet, almost every day, the warung is busy.

But, here's what I think sets them apart:

They're the only ones that sell those 3 dishes in the whole village. There are probably 5 other warungs you can go for dinner nearby. But they all serve the same generic menu. If you want something different, Samad’s is the place to go.
Each dish on the menu is incredible. They're so tasty. And they are also relatively healthier than what his competitors sell.
They're the type of food most people like to eat.
The restaurant has a welcoming atmosphere with a community feel. Customers stay on after meals to mingle and chat.
Samad himself is part of the community that he serves. Most of his customers know him personally, and he regularly comes out of the kitchen to chat. Even if you're not a local, you can feel the vibrant community energy there.

Hustle

And that's not all. Samad has a full-time job. So this is his side hustle in the evenings after work. Running a restaurant is itself a full-time job, and doing it as a side hustle takes tremendous energy. The work begins way before opening time with shopping and prep, and finishes way past closing time with cleaning up and closing. Every single day. I really have no idea how he does it. But he is constantly busy! He does have staff, and they are friends and family. But Samad does all the cooking. I doubt this is something he can do alone sustainably.

As an indie entrepreneur, I envy Samad’s small yet perfectly formed business. It's the sort of business I aspire to build and run for myself, albeit mine would be something digital (I already run a cocktail bar side hustle and that is insane enough!).

Lessons

Observing Samad’s thriving small business, here’s there are a few factors that stand out, which match common entrepreneurship wisdom we hear all the time:

Sell something a lot of people want. His dishes are those that locals love to eat. An important phrase here is "a lot of people" to ensure there's a large enough market to sustain the business.
Be unique. Find out how people are being underserved and offer them something different. In Samad’s case, it's about giving the community a fresh new option when they inevitably ask themselves "where shall we go for dinner?"
Serve your community. You already know what they like, how they're being underserved, and how to reach them. Use that as an advantage.
Solve one problem, and solve it well. In other words, keep it simple. Keeping things simple and minimising the product scope allows you to focus better. In turn this will allow you to improve the product quickly and get to “product market fit” quicker.
Create a "place to hang out" around your product. This is different from "building a community". You are already part of the community. But you're offering like-minded customers somewhere to mingle and chat. Samad’s place attracts a lot of surfers that are from the village or come to the village to surf. They hang out at Samad’s during and after meals to chat surf.

Samad’s place didn't start off the way I described it above. His mum used to run it. In fact, it still is and it is still named after her. When his mum ran it, she did serve the usual fare that everybody else did. But, in addition to that, she was also famous for one special dish - marrow soup. And nobody else in the village served this. So even then, they were already serving something different.

The restaurant closed down after Samad’s mum became ill, and it remained closed until Samad decided to try out his dishes. It proved a hit, so he decided to reopen the restaurant with his new, yet very limited, menu.

Keep it simple

If I had to pick only one lesson from Warung Pok Mid, it’s this: keep things simple.

A business has many moving parts, and they’re all interconnected. Samad’s menu of 3 items not only allows him to focus on being great at one specific thing, but it simplifies ALL other parts of his business too.

And this allows us as indie entrepreneurs and side hustlers to run faster and more efficiently.