Most teens spend their free time on TikTok. Not brother-and-sister Bill and Claire Chan, who run their own F&B business from home selling scones and healthy, freezer-friendly savoury meals. On top of being budding entrepreneurs, Claire, 17, and Bill, 15, are also national athletes and IB programme students.

The duo play competitive tennis, for which they have been training since childhood. They have represented Singapore in international tournaments like the ITF World Tennis Tour Juniors and WTA Future Stars.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Bill frequently travelled “12 to 15 times a year for competitions''. Claire, who’s studying for her university admission exams, had to dial back on her tennis commitments. “We both train four hours a day, six days a week off-tournament. During tournament weeks, we could easily spend 35 to 45 hours on the court every week,” she shares with 8days.sg.

As tennis is an expensive sport, their training expenses naturally add up to a hefty yearly sum for their parents. To teach her kids financial responsibility, Bill and Claire’s mum, Hui Yoke Leng, 48, suggested that they start a home-based business to earn their own keep. “I want them to know the value of money,” explains Yoke Leng, who’s also a league tournament tennis player running her own trading business (she declines to be photographed for this story).

Claire and Bill set up Staunch Food on April 4 this year. “It was a name suggested by mum, but Bill and I didn’t like it ’cos it was too adult-y and serious,” Claire laughs. But, unable to come up with an alternative name, the siblings eventually settled on Staunch, a word that references their sport and Christian background. “It was a name chosen after some dislike and doubts, like many things in life that matter,” muses the eloquent Claire.

The precocious siblings — who also dabble in trading — had to build their business from scratch. Under the guidance of their mum’s web designer friend, Bill and Claire learnt the basics of coding to get their website on track, and snapped their own food photos.

“We learn through trial and error,” Claire tells us. She now divides the workload with her brother. “I do the workflow and website maintenance, and create a spreadsheet to show how much we deliver in a day,” says Bill, while Claire “mans the phone” and handles the customers’ queries and payments. She also helps her mum on weekends with cooking for orders.

But it’s not all work and no play for the siblings, who also indulge in their hobbies like karaoke. “It’s important to have a social life during junior college years,” declares Claire confidently.

Yoke Leng came up with Staunch’s menu, which mainly comprises Western-style recipes that she cooks for her own family (you could assemble a whole three-course meal from the options). This includes comfort food like Aged Parmesan Garlic Chicken, Honey Soya Glazed Japanese Beef and Bait Up!, a nasi ulam-style quinoa, basmati rice and fish dish.

There are also starters like a crunchy Spring & Summer Salad with baby spinach and fried fish skin, and a chilled angel hair pasta with fish roe dish called Chilled Rock & Roes. And for dessert, giant scones with optional homemade cream and natural rock salted butter.

The scones come in interesting flavours like Cempedak & Chia Seeds, Gula Melaka & Coconut, Dates & Banana and Blueberry & Dark Chocolate. There’s also homemade Kombucha, in fruity flavours like Australian Green Grape, and exotic flavours like Luo Han Guo and Dates.

The delivered dishes are all packed in recyclable glass containers (packaging cost is included in the food prices). You can either keep the containers to reuse, or return them to Staunch Food for a refund of up to $4 for your next order, depending on the size of the container.

The food

Yoke Leng created this dish to feed her kids with nutritious food during tournament season. It reminds us of nasi ulam (traditional Malay and Peranakan mixed herb rice), except this is ramped up with organic tricolour quinoa and brown basmati rice aged for two years.

The dish, she explains, is made to have a low glycaemic index (GI). Low GI foods are broken down more slowly in the body, so that one’s blood sugar level does not spike rapidly after eating.

The grains are tossed with white bait, flounder, mackerel, shrimps and fresh herbs like kaffir lime leaves. It’s packed in a banana leaf and delivered to customers chilled, as you’re meant to give it a quick heat-up in the oven just before serving for a smoky whiff.

The portion you get is just enough to feed one (nasi ulam is a rare, hard-to-find dish these days, ’cos so much time and effort goes into chopping the ingredients finely). Each bite, however, is crammed with tasty morsels, so we feel comfortably full after a small serving. The aromatic blend of crunchy grains, umami fish and a medley of herbs and spices makes this a complex, delicious dish that only the most dedicated of cooks (and doting mums) would make for you.

This gourmet order comes with four meaty chicken drumsticks nestling in a glass container. The succulent chook is draped with melted parmesan that has been aged for 24 months — you can smell its potency when you lift the lid. Parmesan (or Parmigiano-Reggiano, if the cheese is made in specific Italian provinces according to local laws) aged for two years has a pronounced, sharp nuttiness that thrills cheese lovers. The cheese sauce is spiked with lots of garlic, sun-dried tomatoes and spinach. You only need some good quality al-dente pasta to make this an atas meal.

Okayama beef is marinated overnight with honey, miso, wine and spices, then stir-fried with Japanese white onion and Australian leek. It’s homely enough and begs for a bowl of fluffy white rice, but we reckon this dish is more of a payday splurge.

These American-style scones are not your typical English scones, which are tall, light, feathery and usually made plain with double cream. Each of these munchkins is almost cartoonishly outsized, measuring about 8cm across. The squat, tawny golden discs are loaded with the unusual combination of sour cream, Greek yogurt and Danish cream.

Our favourite is the Cempedak & Chia Seeds flavour, which is studded with bits of baked cempedak flesh. This buttery number has a pleasingly lush, soft centre with a crisp, craggy top. The Gula Melaka & Coconut boast the same texture, with firm slivers of fresh coconut flesh and the earthy sweetness of palm sugar, while the Medjool Dates & Banana scone is rustic and fragrant.

These are ‘exotic’ flavours, though. If you prefer something more conventional, there's the Blueberry & Belgian Dark Chocolate flavour, though it's not as unique as the other three scone picks offered.

Staunch Food also offers its own slow-baked Granola Crisps, which are little sticky rectangles of steel-cut oats, organic quinoa, skinned almonds, cranberries, sunflower and pumpkin seeds and chia seeds, topped with fresh Jordanian Medjool dates (a pricier varietal that boasts a soft chewiness and caramelly tinge).

Even though it’s not junky potato chips, we almost can’t stop popping these crisps. They’re chewy yet crunchy, earthy, and sweetened with what tastes like honey tempered with a pinch of salt. Each container comes with about 38 to 43 crisps (two to three pieces are enough to sate the munchies). As it's made in very limited quantities, each customer can only order one container of Granola Crisps.

Kombucha, all the rage now for its purported health benefits, is a type of sweetened black or green tea fermented with SCOBY (a pancake-shaped symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast). The fermentation process gives kombucha its distinctive sour fizziness.

Buying this at gourmet grocers like Scoop Wholefoods would usually cost you around $10 for 200ml, which makes Staunch Food’s version rather reasonably priced. The homemade concoction here is also good; there are some 10 flavours offered, though not all are available at the same time.

At press time, New Zealand Yellow Kiwi ($10 for 500ml) is on the menu. We tried Passion Fruit, Pineapple and Pomegranate and found them nicely refreshing for the hot weather. Advance order of at least three days required.

To order, go to www.staunchfood.com. Islandwide delivery available.

Photos: Kelvin Chia