Just months after investing in Creative Eateries (CE), Andie Chen was already diving headfirst into a huge project.
The local actor-businessman, who acquired the local F&B chain in November 2025 together with his brothers, took to YouTube on July 10 to vlog his experience overseeing the business’ operations at Singapore Airshow 2026. The vlog comes as the fourth episode of his Building Creatives docuseries.
The biennial event was held at Changi Exhibition Centre from Feb 3 to 8 and according to aviation site Asian Sky Group, drew a total of 125,000 attendees from over 130 countries.
“We’re having a really huge catering event… Basically for me, I know for a fact that the catering arm is going to be in chaos,” prefaced the 41-year-old, who was seen making his way to the central kitchen.
However, upon making his rounds during peak hours, production hadn’t been as chaotic as he envisioned although the environment was “high stress, very high-paced”.
“In my mind it’s like those Hong Kong movies we watch where in the kitchen, the chefs are shouting while frying and everybody’s everywhere with things all over the place,” expressed Andie.
“But it’s not. It’s almost like structured chaos where everyone knows exactly what they’re supposed to do and things are very smooth and clean. Everyone was very locked in.”
While at the event itself, Andie gave viewers a rundown of CE’s tasks, including meals for the public and clients like trade show partners and private event attendees.
Across the six days, CE whipped up 10 different cuisines for their catering including local, Thai, Japanese, Mexican, Indian, Korean and vegetarian.
Andie remarked: “Even for something that we have to keep very minimal and high-volume, we still try to serve all sorts of food. Honestly, as an owner, it’s quite shiok because I get to eat all sorts of different food.”
At CE’s main kiosk, Andie and fellow co-owner Crystalz Ong encountered several mishaps: a newly broken-down credit card machine and coffee machine. The latter had to video-call a technician to assist her in fixing the coffee machine, taking over 30 minutes.
Ong added that the previous day was even more “eventful”, as the microphone broke down and the CE team had to shout and keep replenishing food as it ran out. There were also electricity issues and a plug had to be changed, along with her shoe giving way.
Towards the end of the day, the CE team strategised beer sales during happy hour to keep attendees relaxed. “Because they’re not gonna be able to get a ride out anyway. They’re gonna be stuck here for at least an hour – might as well drink beer,” quipped Andie.
Two days after the Air Show, Andie broke down the numbers and looked back on his experience. Overall, 60 CE staff members were involved and worked more than 3,000 hours collectively, 6,275 bentos were served, buffet arrangements were catered to 1,320 persons, more than 6,000 main dishes were sold in the cafeteria and snacks were provided for at least 6,000 people.
“For this series Building Creatives, I think this is our first win and a lot of lessons learned,” reflected Andie. “Serving an event of more than 100,000 people on this macro scale, it’s emotionally moving.
“It’s clear that food is a very fundamental need, and being able to provide this fundamental need for people is very meaningful.”
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kristy.chua@asiaone.com
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