Making Dough by Teaching Dough
from Open For Business Hosted by BFM Media
Chef Ben Chua operates a highly specialised, fully bootstrapped sourdough baking studio out of Tropicana Avenue, Petaling Jaya. Following a deliberate, unconventional eight-year apprenticeship (which spanned a finance degree, a stint as a Grab driver, and an unpaid bakery internship while working as a commis chef at two-Michelin-starred Dewakan) he built a physical education business rooted entirely in human transformation. Over a thousand students from more than thirty nationalities have since passed through his doors at Reserved.KL. Revenue has jumped from RM100,000 in 2024 to RM350,000 in 2025, and is currently tracking toward half a million ringgit this year. The entire financial model however, rests on one founder in one room, with a strict hard cap of ten students per class. Chef Ben joins us to unpack the unit economics of a solo teaching business and the exact mechanics of escaping the founder bottleneck. We discuss the strategic paradox of attempting to scale via online courses when his core thesis demands physical presence, the commercial viability of international Panettone competitions, and what happens to a business when the only path to growth is becoming less personal.
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