MyTreat is a social media drive that encourages people to purchase someone else a restaurant meal. The list of recommended restaurants include local favourites like Tanuki Raw, MeatSmith and New Ubin Seafood. Tan says that while she may not buy herself a restaurant meal on a regular basis, she will buy a meal for someone else just to do something nice for another person. The idea for the movement, she adds, started when Tan had a conversation with her friend and orthopaedic surgeon Dr Mizan Marican. Tan explains: “[Mizan] was telling me how he had been buying treats for his colleagues working in the isolation wards and emergency department at Singapore General Hospital.”
SINGAPORE (June 12): Annette Tan is a food writer, author, food consultant and private dining chef. On normal days, her popular private dining service FatFuku sees constant bookings of at least eight to ten people gathering at home to savour her brand of Peranakan food. However, the “circuit breaker” measures — in place on April 7 to curb the spread of Covid-19 — put a stop to all social gatherings. This also meant that Tan’s business all but disappeared.
Undeterred, Tan started MyTreat, a non-profit pay-it-forward movement aimed at supporting the local restaurant industry. As she tells Options: “In mid-March, I was interviewing restaurateurs for a story about how Covid-19 had affected their businesses. All of them spoke of how their restaurants were so close to going belly-up because business had been severely affected. That really saddened me, especially because I think of them as my friends. As a food writer, the F&B industry has given me a community and a vocation, so it felt very close to home. I really wanted to do something to help, even if it’s in a small way.”
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