Monkey in the Kitchen

Where monkeying around became the key to creating a unique Father’s Day campaign.

This is that story:

Pilot Kitchen was a restaurant tucked in Havelock II, an old mall in Clarke Quay. With a comprehensive TikTok strategy, Instagram rebrand and Instagram Highlights Reservation service, we went from zero customers to fully booked with waitlist (view my PR highlights here and here).

But one thing that stood out about the restaurant was its fun nature – the chefs were four young guys, eager to put out amazing food with interesting tastes, crazy stories, and fun initiatives.

Before I left, we’d managed to work on a range of meaningful partnerships. Because the boys wanted to work with a legendary kitchen appliance, we starred on a mini ‘show’ for Thermomix, creating special dishes in under thirty minutes – four tattooed guys and their take on sambal.

One especially poignant collaboration was our Father’s Day collaboration. While we were a young restaurant that seemed to break multiple rules: open space, no culinary experience, but had the honour of a thriving and huge crowd anyway; we wanted to pay homage to a traditional occasion at least once.

Thus began Pilot’s story of Father’s Day: Monkey in the Kitchen.

Pilot was anchored by its youth and gentle rebellion. Recipes were reinvented. The boys were young and full of hope with each new rendition. Cooking was a passion, and serving guests – striking up warm conversation with people much older and younger – was a brilliant way for them to connect with community, and what they enjoyed doing.

Customers often had front row seats to them ‘monkeying’ around in the kitchen, kneading dough too aggressively or singing their favourite Taylor Swift songs while working on the hamachi collar.

So when I got the opportunity to link up the boys with Monkey Shoulder, a whiskey with a story – with personality – we decided to tell a story.

The chefs had always found their fathers to be distant people – a little bit tough on the outside (sometimes extremely tough), but soft when it mattered. Dessert isn’t something perceived as ‘manly’, but the right cookie hits the spot. They created ‘Cookie’, a dessert retailing for Father’s Day, with a special sauce made of caramelised orange peel and Monkey Shoulder’s Smokey Monkey.

The brand came over to try it. The dessert had an interactive portion: you had to knock on the cookie twice with a spoon to reveal its filling. Then you mixed all the components together to taste the fully force of the dessert’s nuanced sweetness.

Kind of like many of our relationships with our Asian dads.

We launched the ‘Cookie’ campaign: four young chefs, one bottle of Monkey.

Sold out Father’s Day, and through the story of our dessert, we helped many have a moment of cherished sweetness on the day itself.