The HEALTH Plus | OCTOBER, 2019
14
p14
CHEERFUL: Hairull is always happy with the food quality that they are serving.
All eyes on Yoo!
Local Yoo Tiao chain taking the nation by storm with
fresh and quality ingredients
T
BY SYED ZAID
mind at ease.” The board of directors share the
same sentiment.
According to the Chairman of I Love Yoo!,
Datuk Ahmad Zaki, “on a business stand point,
it helps us in creating a bigger market reach. To
appeal more to the local Muslims, we’ve added
a lot of Malay and Indian cuisine like Rendang
Ayam, Hot Chicken Masala, Dried Curry Laksa
and Sakura Shrimp Cake into our menu. We
want to make I Love Yoo! something that is
truly Malaysian by adding the Muhibbah
aspect into our brand name.”
HE ‘cakoi’, also known as
Yoo Tiao, it is one of the most
treasured snack among
Malaysians. While it is usually
obtained from roadside stalls
along our ‘pasar malam’
and morning market, the shop known as
I Love Yoo! took it into the next level by
commercialising the product and having it
available in shopping malls.
The founder, Gian Lim says that he learned
the potential of a commercialised Yoo Tiao
business when he started his fi rst outlet at the
Food Republic, Pavilion back in September of
2007. “Yoo Tiao have over 800 years of history
as one of the traditional Chinese snack food.
Normally, we get Yoo Tiao from coff ee shops
and roadside stalls. We are the fi rst ones to
bring this snack into shopping malls to have a
better, hygienic, safe and comfortable dining
area for customers to enjoy our food,” says
Lim.
Loving palm oil
I Love Yoo!! for everyone
With over 50 outlets located around Malaysia,
I Love Yoo! is one of the few Chinese Cuisine-
based brands that puts a strong emphasis
on being halal. According to Lim, he wants
everybody to enjoy his product. “Before this
we have less than 15 percent Malay Muslims
customers. We believe that we can share the
love by obtaining the Halal Certifi cation. With
this, we attracted more Muslim customers.
Moreover, 40 percent of our staff s are also
Muslims,” he says.
However, the brand do face a little bit of a
problem in getting their Halal Certifi cation.
Mohamad Hairull Anuar, The Assistant
Manager cum Halal Excutive of I Love Yoo!
says that “we are still waiting for JAKIM to
fi nish the process of certifying all of our
outlets. We are not allowed to advertise our
brand as fully halal until we have received the
certifi cations for all our outlets. It has been a
very long seven months while they process
our applications. We wish to have it done as
quickly as possible to help put our customers’
HARD WORK
SHOWS: Standing
from left: Mr Jeff rey
Leong (COO), Zaki and
Lim.
I Love Yoo! prides their brand on being fresh.
The doughs are handmade and cooked at the
store. “Maintaining the quality and serving
good food to our customers are our main
priority. We like to use the traditional way to
prepare our food, which is to have all the items
in our menu made from scratch. It adds that
nostalgic feeling that takes our customers back
to their childhood memories. The traditional
way of making things is very synonym and
near to our customer’s heart,” Lim says,
tugging in our heartstrings.
“As a Malaysian brand, we need to support
Malaysia local product, and palm oil is our
Malaysian main product. Since we started
this business, we hav e been using palm oil in
all our products especially for frying process,
and it’s prove that palm oil is suitable for deep
One of I Love Yoo!’s signature – store-made Yoo
Tiao fried in fresh palm oil.
“As a Malaysian
brand, we need
to support
Malaysia
local product,
and palm oil is our
Malaysian main
product. Since we
started this business,
we hav e been using
palm oil for all our
products especially
in frying process,
and it’s prove that
palm oil is suitable
for deep frying. We
are confi dent in palm
oil and will continue
using it as our main
ingredient,”
– Gian Lim
frying. We are confi dent in palm oil and will
continue using it as our main ingredient,” Lim
says patriotically.
Lim and Zaki are aware of the dangers of
reusing cooking oil. “Our practice to change
our frying oil every day is to maintain the
quality of our products. This ensures the
products served to our customers are safe and
healthy. To our knowledge, palm oil is the best
cooking oil. We don’t think there’s any health
risk from consuming palm oil.”
“Our used oil collection is sold to a vendor.
The money goes back to our staff s. It’s an
incentive we provide to encourage them to
change the oil and dispose of it properly. We
off er them this incentive to help our staff s
gain some extra earning for their diligence,”
says Zaki.“We made sure that our workers
understand the importance of changing the
oil and we make sure that it gets done,” states
Lim.
Spreading the love
Not just our products, we aim to have a
Muhibbah board of directors and franchise
holders. “Lim founded it and now we have
a Malay chairman and we’re opening more
room for Indians and Malays as our franchise