Indoguna – a fine food success

Helene Raudaschl, managing director of Indoguna, is very much into food. And so is her staff. For 22 years, they have grown through perseverance in pursuing their mission to source the best quality food products for their customers that include top hotels and restaurants, gourmet shops, supermarkets and airline caterers.

“Passion in food is an important ingredient in this line of work,” declares Raudaschl.

Indoguna started primarily as a meat company in 1993, importing the highest-quality chilled meat from all over the world. Since then, it has been a trendsetter in Singapore, expanding into new product ranges such as seafood, fine food, boutique wine, artisanal cheese and producing its own air-dried meat.

“We are constantly sourcing and developing new projects,” says Raudaschl. “Since we started 22 years ago, we’ve been continuously looking for new products worldwide to distribute, or creating our own products.

“Until today, we are sending teams from different parts of our business overseas, for research, whether via trade missions or exhibitions.

“We then conceptualise many innovative products and services to serve our clients in Singapore and the surrounding countries.”

Indoguna is the first company in Singapore to bring live mussels and clams from Australia to the republic. It was also the first to bring in Iberico pork and ham from Spain, and the first to set up a fermentation room in Singapore to produce salami and air-dried meat.

Currently, Indoguna exports its own house brand of seafood developed in 2005, called Ocean Gems, to Hong Kong, Macau, Malaysia, Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

In 2010, it launched a brand called Carne Meats which offers specialty meat products such as sausages, salami and burger patties in authentic European style.

When asked about any particular project she is really proud of, Rausdachl smiles, saying: “It’s hard to say … I’m proud of every phase of the development of Indoguna. I guess one of the most gratifying moments was when the first salami came out of the production room (after many tests). We were very pleased with the quality.”

She adds: “On reflection, there are many, many things that, when we put them together, make Indoguna what it is today.

“Even though meats make up 50% of our turnover, I still believe that it’s not just meats that make us. It’s really our company philosophy, the way we think about our products, the way we think about our customers that make us different.”

In the face of rising operational costs and a labour crunch in Singapore, catering to customers’ demands is becoming a big challenge.
According to Rausdachl, supply chain issues are indeed more challenging now than before. “Many businesses used to have staff planning their ordering; many are now short-handed.

“Nowadays, when they need something they just pick up the phone. They no longer sit down and check, ‘OK, this is how much I have in stock and this is how much I think I can sell today, and what I need next week.’

“If we can educate our customers on how to consolidate their orders, it would help them — and us — to be more efficient. But people very seldom want to buy a whole carton of goods due to space and labour constraints. They do it on a day-to-day basis. Nobody has the time anymore to plan things.

“Basically, their today’s order is what’re needed for tomorrow — and that’s all they can think about … so I’m delivering daily, sometimes twice a day.”

Rausdachl explains: “Hotels are more organised as they have different departments to work on purchasing; restaurants, on the other hand, most of the time, the owner is the chef as well.”

In reality, the food supply business is really about service, and Indoguna is committed to meeting its customers’ needs. Rusdachl says: “It’s really about the customer. Where the customer demand is, that’s where we have to be.”

“It’s really about the customer. Where the customer demand is, that’s where we have to be..” — Helene Raudaschl, Managing Director, Indoguna

Staying nimble
Rausdachl believes in Indoguna diversifying to serve different customer segments.

“Over the past 22 years of business, we continuously diversify our risks — so we diversify our customer base in that if one sector does not do well, we have another sector that is thriving. We also continue to diversify our range of products.”

She adds: “I don’t perceive economic slowdowns as major challenges as people still have to eat. I think Singapore is still an affluent enough city that people still want to eat well in some ways. They may not go to fine dining restaurants as often as before; perhaps, they go to another restaurant or to the supermarket to look for gourmet foodstuff — and Indoguna covers the supermarket sector as well as offers home delivery service.”

Sustainable seafood
Rausdachl supports sustainable seafood programmes and she believes that there should be more educational programmes and government initiatives to raise consumer awareness.

“We try to buy and supply sustainable seafood products as much as possible to meet the demand. If the client comes to us and ask for bluefin tuna, we’ll try to find the best farmed bluefin tuna to save the species from extinction. However, it’s not my business to tell the client to consider changing the menu to something else instead of bluefin tuna.”

Rausdachl believes that with more awareness and more people talking about this, it could help to lessen the demand for species facing extinction, prompting a change in the menu.

Always running faster
“In business, to stand out in any industry, we have to continue to innovate. With social media and the Internet, communication is moving so fast, we can’t rest. If we stop, somebody will catch up. In businesses like ours, we have to constantly be on top.

“If I don’t do it, somebody else will. So I have to run faster. It’s like the air-dried meat. We are the only ones here now. But I know sooner or later, somebody is going to copy us — but I know that when the time comes, I’ll be on to something else.”

Indeed, Raudaschl and her team are continuously scouring the world for the best food supplies. You can be sure that, for the love of food, where the best is, that’s where Indoguna will be.