I met the angels in the UK (Part 2)

Hi guys! There were quite a number of you who asked for Part 2 of my story in the UK, so here it is! If you have not read part 1, you can read it HERE.

After working in the Fish & Chip shop (we called it Chippy in the UK) for my first lady boss (the nasty one), in order to get a higher salary with my experience, plus my ability to communicate with the customers in Scouse Accent 😂 , I worked in a few different places, working with different colleagues and bosses, but none of them were as memorable as my last boss who I worked for.

After working for slightly more than a year, my boyfriend (Jerry, who is now my husband❤️ ) and I quit working for others and started our own Chippy shop in Liverpool. That’s the beginning of my entrepreneurship journey.

The last Chippy that I worked in, was a shop located at the outskirt of Liverpool. The name of the shop is called May Bo which was run by a lovely Chinese couple. They did not know how to speak English very well. Hence I was able to handle most of the thing for them, especially when it comes to communicating with customers and suppliers.

One day, someone asked us if we were interested to rent his Chippy shop to start our own business. The shop was equipped with everything needed, all we need to do is to make the food and sell. We thought that was a very good opportunity and we should take it.

Frankly speaking, both Jerry and I only had the experience of how to take care of the daily operation of a Chippy shop, but we did not know how to start a Chippy shop from scratch; and most importantly, how to cook. So we told my bosses our plan of opening our own Chippy, and Jerry proposed if he can learn from my boss (who is the Chef in May Bo) on how to prepare the ingredients and how to cook, which in return he will work for them for free.

We did not put a high hope that my boss would agree to it. There’s a perception on Chinese where they do not teach people what they know because they are afraid that you will get all their business in the end. I guess it’s not just Chinese, but people who are doing business as they are more business minded. Everything they do, it would be for the money.

Why did I say it’s a perception then? Because my boss agreed to Jerry’s suggestion almost immediately and gladly!

Source

And that changed the perception that I had. Maybe it’s just particularly my boss and his wife? Yet, I would rather believe that there are more people out there who are willing to share their knowledge unconditionally.

Jerry took only 2 weeks to learn how to prepare the ingredients and how to cook the dishes, and we opened our own Chippy shop right after that.

We were really lucky, everything was very well taught by Jerry’s Sifu, my boss. He gave us all his secret recipes, and make sure Jerry prepared the materials correctly and cooked it the right way. I resigned after that and start preparing for our own shop, the CJ's Takeaway.

So it was the night before our shop’s opening and we had an unexpected visit. Both of us were doing the preparation until midnight. My boss and his wife drove a long way to visit us after they closed their shop. They were here just to make sure that we were all ready for the opening. He even scolded Jerry for not preparing the beef right! They were like the angels to us, words could never be enough to express how grateful we were to have them, and I would remember it forever.

With the opening of our shop, some said it’s impossible for us to make it with just that 2 weeks “training”. Even if we did, it wouldn’t last long. We believe if we were determined to do something, we will find every way to make it work and make it better along the way. Some said we were a risk taker, and asked if we ever thought about failing.

The thing is, what is the worse scenario that could have happened? If the business failed, we could always go back to work for someone else like what we did before. As long as I’m still alive, there’s always another path to move on. Failing in business is not the end of the world.

Everything went well after the opening and we started to run the business and make it better in every way we could. Distributing flyers of our menu to each house was the thing to do during rest time of the shop. Business was good with a group of loyal customers.

After running the business for almost a year, something happened and I was left alone in Liverpool, running our Chippy shop.

I would love to share everything with you in this post, yet it would be too long to squeeze everything in. Sorry for this super long post as my fingers kept typing and it wouldn’t stop 😂

Let me know if you are interested to know what Jerry and I been through (which was the most unforgettable experience to the both of us), I will be happy to share it in Part 3 of my story :)

Related Post:
My Part 1 Story: What I have been through in the UK when I was 19 years old
My Part 3 Story: Goodbye Jerry