A New Tempo #8: Choice Cuts Goods + Coffee Remains A Toasty Joint With Its New Home
Choice Cuts, are you okay?
The ability to bring people together is a gift. With natural charm and shrewd foresight, it’s something the folks from Matteblacc know well enough. Since 2012, they’ve toiled and hustled in the scene to solidify the Matteblacc brand, one synonymous with residencies with a strong hip-hop core, striking events that’ve brought down the likes of Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Arrested Development, and spot-on music direction for lifestyle brands. As vibe-bringers, Jnr Tirso and Dre Reyes – both founding partners of the collective – always bring their A-game in uniting others. So when they revealed the launch of Choice Cuts Goods + Coffee, things just clicked.
Dre Reyes and Jnr Tirso run things at Choice Cuts (Credit: Matin Latif)
Conceptualised from scratch, Choice Cuts was crafted from the idea of Dre wanting to have a record store, investing his own money to bring it to fruition. From the shop design to the hand-built furniture, and even the delectable range of self-baked tiramisus (a popular choice amongst visitors) and bagel sandwiches on the menu, Dre dipped his hands into every cookie jar he could to make Choice Cuts a reality. Today, he runs it together with Tirso and staffmates who make the store a snug, cosy spot for all sorts of hobbyists.
Choice Cuts has always been more than just your average store. It’s a record shop for the vinyl junkies with bounties in the space of old-school hip-hop, neo-soul, funk, electronic and beyond. It’s a coffee joint for the caffeine connoisseurs where the aroma of roasted beans lingers in the air. And it’s even a pop-up space for music events ranging from footwork dance sessions and open-deck invitationals to live gigs and album launches. Bunch all of that together with accessories and other products, and you have a locale with finesse in a particular lifestyle, one adored by a blooming community.
It’s this community that makes Choice Cuts such a beloved waterhole and communal habitat to hang out in; underlining the sociable intentions of its Matteblacc creators. Even after two moves – the store relocated from Serangoon to Joo Chiat, and again across the street just a couple of months ago – it continues to draw patrons like musos to a good groove, both familiar faces who’ve remained loyal to the brand and new explorers who stumble upon its casual storefront. Anyone who walks through its doors is welcomed with open arms, and it’s a warm gesture that makes this place thrive no matter where it’s based.
For this edition of A New Tempo, I speak to Tirso about how Choice Cuts Goods + Coffee has been coping with everything that’s been happening with COVID-19, and how it decided to make the risky decision to change address in such unstable times.
“It was kinda stressful at the beginning. I kinda caught wind of the fact that DJ-ing might stop for us in January. I said to Dre, ‘Can you imagine if the money that we made from DJ-ing didn’t exist anymore?’. And that instead of paying that money to our staff that operate our business, we recover from the tiredness of DJ-ing and instead channel our energy to run the business ourselves and reap the benefits of running it like a true mom-and-pop shop operation. The more we did ourselves, the more we could be in a cashflow-positive situation so that we could revisit having staff. So now we’re trying to make up for maybe five months of so-so business. We have to be appreciative of everyone who’s helped us.”
“August seems to be a time of transition for us. In our very first permutation of Choice Cuts, we were in a shophouse as well and we’d only been operating eight months till our landlord wanted us to vacate because he wanted to develop. Two years later, a similar situation happened where the landlord wanted to rent out the ground floor to an anchor tenant. In the steps leading up to that, he told us that the rent would be going up, to an amount that was double of what we were paying.”
“We were a little bit risk-averse to spending money during this time because it’s no secret that COVID-19 has brought on a lot of hard times for everybody. Dre and I are both DJs so a huge part of our own personal income was affected by the closure of clubs. It changed the dynamic of how we could run our business because before, Dre and I could afford to have staff by investing a bit of money from our DJ side of the business to keep everything fluid. So we moved here out of necessity; the lease was up and they were gonna double it. And we just found an opportunity where it was near the same price but with better footfall, and easier for new discovery for people.”
“It was a risk that was worth taking, because although I was the one who was more risk-averse, the only way we could do it was if we bootstrap it and really manage everyone’s expectations, because we needed to get some traction and use the sales and run the business ourselves in a very skeletal way. We’re running the business seven days a week, working 12-14 hour shifts on the weekends. But it was rewarding nevertheless because we see every weekend get a little bit better. It’s nice to be in a neighbourhood like Katong/Joo Chiat where you have people who are proud to live here and stay in the hood. There’s nothing like people who live in Katong and Joo Chiat. Over here, there’s a vibe.”
“The philosophy behind Matteblacc, first of all, is that we believe that we can bring good people together with music, far and wide. We felt that there was a fragmented audience we had faith in. We were concerned about how commercialised it was getting and so we decided to step away from that. We believe that if we played good music, we can bring those people together. It wasn’t just about playing ’90s hip-hop, but more about how we had to take this out of a club and get people together who really like quality music, and that’s anything from the African diaspora to funk, jazz, reggae, dancehall, Afrobeat, house and disco. We got to a place where we were kinda done with the clubs, but what could we do to get people together? So we were well… coffee’s a good starting point!”
“And now we’re lucky to have a lot of people coming in who don’t even know about who we are. So we tell them firstly that we’re a retail/record shop and takeaway food concept with specialty coffee. There aren’t music heads now. The early adopters are there, then we have this echo market that aren’t even trying to echo the early adopters; they’re just hungry and thirsty and think we’re cool and makes them feel like they’re not in Singapore. It’s like we have the best of both worlds. We have new blood that just wants to consume stuff and the cool kids who know what’s up. It doesn’t matter where we go; it’s not the building but the soul that goes on to the next venue.”
Choice Cuts Goods + Coffee, 446 Joo Chiat Road, Singapore 427659, Mon-Sun 9am-6pm. Follow its Facebook and Instagram pages to stay updated with its activities.
