At first glance, Bakes By NY looks like any other Muslim-owned bakery chain, albeit one specialising in Italian-style stuffed doughnuts in all sorts of flavours including ondeh ondeh, Milo dinosaur and strawberry creme. But how it got to its current three outlets and staff of 13 is a bittersweet, inspiring story.

Like all good husbands, Muhammad Khairul Anwar, 35, wants to give his wife the life she deserves. One in which she can revel in the joys of their children and not worry about their family’s finances. That’s why in 2013, Khairul quit his full-time job to start a more lucrative business — although lucrative didn’t necessarily equate to legitimate.

Khairul’s enterprise involved buying cigarettes from Indonesia and smuggling them into Singapore through a freight forwarder. By hiding the cigarettes in bulky items like furniture, he circumvented the high import duties and sold them for up to 700 percent profits to retailers on the ground. The possibility of getting caught never really bothered him. “I guess the money blinded me to the dangers of getting caught,” he admits.

Two years later, the jig was up. Khairul was arrested late one evening at a refuse collection centre where he was dismantling and discarding the bed headboards that hid his shipment of cigarettes. “I still don’t know how they found out, but I guess they’d been following us for a while,” he says. He was sentenced to two years and eight months in jail.

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Khairul’s wife, Nazira Bte Yunos, 31, never questioned her husband’s business. “I never suspected anything was wrong,” she recalls. So when she received the phone call informing her of his arrest, her world came tumbling down.

It was a whole month before Nazira would get to speak to Khairul. “The night I was arrested, I was in lock-up at Customs for two days before I was charged in court,” he explains. “Then I was remanded at Cantonment Complex for a week before I was sent back to court again and eventually remanded at Changi Prison for the next few months.”

The couple finally spoke for the first time when he was allowed a tele-visit with his family from Changi Prison. “I don’t remember the first thing Nazira said to me that day, but I remember asking my mother to leave the room so that I could talk to her alone. I asked her if she would wait for me and she said she would. I was so relieved, so that’s really all I remember of that visit,” he says.

Photo: Bakes by NY

Prison gave Khairul plenty of time to mull over his plight. “At first, I wasn’t satisfied that I was arrested. I planned to start doing the business again when I came out. But after being there for some time, I came to my senses and realised that I can do better with my life, which is when I formulated what to do when I got out,” he says.

Khairul told Nazira to quit her job as a staff nurse and enrol for baking classes so that she could start a home-based business and spend more time with their infant son. Their mothers pitched in by helping to care for their son and paying for the courses and equipment like her stand mixer. “I wasn’t interested in baking initially because it wasn’t part of the plan,” admits Nazira. “But I did it anyway because I had to. Only after a while, I began to enjoy it.”

Khairul spent a year in prison before he was released as part of the Home Detention Scheme where he was monitored through an electronic ankle tag for the next year. “Before we left prison, they gave us job interviews. I got a job as a dispatch rider for a company in Woodlands. I had to wear the tag and could only go to work and have to get home by 10pm.”

When he was released in 2016, Nazira was mostly selling birthday cakes and brownies to family members and friends. Khairul quickly set about growing the business. He improved their website and structured a delivery framework, and engaged with social media influencers to create awareness for their brand.

When he told his reporting officer that he wanted to start a business with his wife, she informed him that they needed a licensed premises. And that’s how they opened their first Bakes By NY store (NY refers to Nazira’s initials) at Centropod, a mall in Geylang, which they rented for $800 a month. “I used my own money for that first shop’s [startup costs], which initially cost about $4,000. Over the years [when we needed to expand or invest in the business], my mother, my family members, even my grandmother helped,” he says.

When he was done serving his penalty and the shop’s lease was up, Khairul closed it and set up shop in a larger unit at East Village. Business grew steadily enough that he took a second unit at East Village before closing them both down to start another one in the busier locale of Tampines Street 23 in January last year.

In 2018, Khairul noticed a growing trend for bomboloni or Italian-style stuffed doughnuts in Malaysia. So he drove to Kuala Lumpur with Nazira where they attended a bomboloni class by a popular bakery. When they returned, they created interesting flavours like ondeh ondeh and kopi C doughnuts, which now form 99 percent of their business. During festive seasons like Hari Raya, the bakery makes classic snacks like pineapple tarts, Nutella tarts, honey cornflake cookies and sugee biscuits.

“Business got better once we moved to Tampines early last year,” says Khairul. “That’s when we broke even. When we had the smaller shops before that, we sold mostly through Instagram and the website. I didn’t want to depend on a single source of income for the business, so I thought if I had the option to open a shop where there is high footfall, it can be another source of income, which is why I went into the Tampines heartland where I grew up, so I know the area well. And we got a good response there.”

Khairul has since opened two more stores — one in Simpang Bedok, which also serves as their central kitchen, and another in Yishun. He has set up an office at Ubi and employs a team of 13 full-time staff. He has plans for more stalls and another central kitchen. “Right now, we are looking for another space and considering if we should stay a bakery or open a dine-in concept. My hope is that one day, we can reach the level of Dunkin Donuts or something like that. I would also love to expand overseas, but we can’t do that now because of the pandemic.”

His plan for his family, though, is firmly on track. Nazira no longer works and is now a full-time housewife who now spends her days caring for the couple’s three young children aged between seven and three. They’ve since hired staff to bake in their central kitchen. “I’m happy to be able to stay at home. All I wanted was to look after my children without worrying about money. I love Khairul’s never-give-up spirit. I’m so proud that he’s achieved what we have right now,” she says quietly.

Looking back, Khairul says he’s glad that he has put his natural acumen for business to good use. “I think I always had a sense for business, even when I was doing the wrong thing. Prison taught me patience. At that time, I just wanted everything fast. Now I know how to pace myself. I know that even if I want something badly, I cannot get it immediately. So I have to think about the long run. I cannot get what I want overnight.”

Among Bake By NY’s popular flavours are Nutella, Chocolate Fudge, Biscoff, Cream Cheese and Ovalmaltine. You can buy them individually at the bakeries or as a set of five from the online store.

This features a generous mound of pure cookie butter spread within the tender doughnuts. The smooth cookie butter has a lovely toasty flavour and is surprisingly addictive.

The centres of these donuts are filled with a thick and mildly-scented pandan pastry cream (essentially a light custard). They are drizzled with gula Melaka sauce and topped with a gentle dusting of desiccated coconut. Decent enough, but we prefer the more chocolatey flavours.

Just lots of pure, oozy Nutella in a hearty doughnut.

The pastry cream in this one is too milky for our taste. It could also do with a lot more Milo in it.

Although doughnuts are their mainstays, during Hari Raya, the stores sell popular favourites like pineapple tarts, $18; Nutella tarts, $20; suji cookies, $14; and marble cake, $10. There is good reason why the marble cake is particularly popular — it is fluffy, buttery and rich, with an excellent ratio of chocolate to vanilla batter.

Although the doughnuts are rich and cakey with a thick crumb instead of light and fluffy, we find them quite pleasant. We also like that they aren’t too greasy or sweet and come in easy-to-like flavours. We can see why they’re popular with the Muslim community.

Bakes By NY has three outlets, including 351 Bedok Rd, S469539. Tel: 8123-3953. Open noon-10pm daily; 2pm-6pm on 12 May. Closed 13 to 17 May. https://www.bakesbyny.com

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Photos: Kelvin Chia