Yesterday I went to 1Utama for lunch with my parents. We ate at the laksa shack, which serves pretty yummy food. It was my mum’s choice cos it was her birthday. Anyway, during our meal, my dad noticed the “Pau specialist shop” opposite, which is called Baoz. It’s a pretty cool looking shop which sells all these different types of paus. Supposedly the chef comes from China (or maybe they said that in the newspaper because it sounds cooler than saying “Our chef is Malaysian..”. They’ve got paus with black sesame filling, cheese and corn, mooncake-type fillings, etc. We bought 3 to take home and try, and the price was RM1.80 each, whereas normal paus are only RM1 each!

We had the paus for breakfast this morning, and after testing each one, I am of the opinion that these paus are seriously over-rated. They taste fine…but they need to be better than fine if they want to convince us to buy those paus instead of the paus from coffee shops. Could it be because of the ambience of the shop that convinces people to buy from them instead?

Maybe their target is towards the younger crowd. I can’t imagine the older generation willing to pay that much just for a pau! My mum is still of the opinion that Starbucks/Coffee Bean is way to expensive just for a cup of coffee.

However, if you think about it, there are actually more shops that offer normal everyday foods for expensive prices. For example, look at Uncle Lim’s coffee shop. Basically, they offer the same thing that any other coffee shop has, but at double/triple the prices. OK, so their ambience is a lot nicer, but still…paying so much more for something like two half-boiled eggs? I think my grandma would be shocked if I brought her there and then showed her the bill!

So, at the end of the day, the question is, ‘Would you be willing to pay twice/triple the price of normal food just for the ambience?’

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