Last week, the Ramadan holidays gave me something rare. Time to stay grounded in Singapore, to slow down, and to simply be with family.

My daughter, with the quiet confidence of someone who knows she's about to change your mind, introduced me to her favourite new brand. Chagee.

I'll be honest. The first thing she said was, "Papa, you need to download the app to order."

I resisted. I didn't like that. Not initially.

But then something shifted.

The Experience Won Me Over

I visited a few stores. Katong, Suntec City, and Parkway Parade. Partly out of curiosity, partly because I wanted to understand whether what I felt the first time was real, or just novelty. It was real. Every single time.

The stores were warm. Not just in lighting, though the lighting was beautiful, but in feeling. The merchandise on the shelves stopped me. Floral flasks. Ceramic teapots. Branded totes and caps. I caught myself genuinely wanting to buy them. Not because I needed them. But because they meant something. They felt like belonging.

I even ended up buying a Chagee branded cup for SG$54. Something I have never once considered doing for any telco or bank I have ever subscribed to.

At Suntec City, I noticed something that stayed with me. A dedicated corner for kids, thoughtfully put together, warm and unhurried, the kind of space that tells a parent: we thought about your family, not just your order. I'm including the pictures because it deserves to be seen. And then I started noticing the details everywhere I went.

The beautiful emblem on every cup. Simple, deliberate, unmistakable. The carry bags they hand you, designed with the same care as a luxury brand, not an afterthought. The cup itself, engineered to hold its temperature, so that whether you sip it immediately or forty minutes into your walk home, the experience remains exactly as it should be. These are not accidents. These are decisions. Hundreds of small, intentional decisions made by people who genuinely cared about what landed in your hands.

And then there is the eight seconds. That is how long Chagee takes to produce a cup of tea. From the moment the process begins to the moment it is ready. Eight seconds of precise, standardised craft. Not a guarantee of how fast you will be served, but a promise of the quality and consistency behind every single cup. It tells you, without a single word, that someone upstream cared deeply enough to engineer this moment for you.

What moved me even more was their transparency. Chagee tells you exactly what goes into your drink. The calories, the ingredients, the sugar levels. Presented clearly, without fine print or confusion. In a world where brands routinely hide behind complexity, that kind of openness feels almost radical. It says: we have nothing to hide, and we trust you with the truth.

And that is when it hit me.

I cannot, not even for a moment, imagine paying money for merchandise branded by a telco or a bank.

Not a mug. Not a tote bag. Not a cap. Not even a pen.

Why is that?

The Contrast That Kept Me Thinking

Somewhere along the way, telcos made a strange choice. Instead of competing on experience, they chose to compete on price. Each operator racing the other to the bottom, quietly stripping value from the industry in the process. It feels like the easier way out, far easier than doing the hard work of orchestrating a truly great customer experience.

Imagine if Coca-Cola and Pepsi decided their only strategy was to keep cutting prices. We would never have had "Open Happiness" or "The Pepsi Generation." We would have just had cheaper fizzy drinks and two diminished brands.

Telcos are doing exactly that. And it shows.

Right around the same week, I tried renewing my home broadband. The process was not simple. I'm still not happy with my WiFi coverage. There are dead zones in my own home that frustrate me every single day. I found myself thinking, I wish a telco could just come and fix this for me. I wish reaching their customer service felt as easy as walking into a Chagee store and having a warm conversation over a cup of tea.

Our telecom services are our lifeline. The internet is how we work, how we learn, how we stay connected to the people we love. And yet, somewhere along the way, telcos have reduced this lifeline to a deeply anxious experience. We dread calling them. We worry when we have to walk into one of their stores. We brace ourselves before picking up the phone.

That anxiety, that low-grade dread, should never exist around something this essential.

What Chagee Gets That Telcos and Banks Don't

Chagee is not selling tea.

They are selling ritual. They are selling identity. They are selling a reason to stay, not just to transact and leave.

When I walked into those stores, I wasn't a customer completing a task. I was a guest in a space that had been thoughtfully designed for me to feel something. The seating invited lingering. The kids' corner invited families. The merchandise invited pride. And every single detail, from the star on the cup to the bag in your hand to the temperature of your drink forty minutes later, whispered the same thing:

Someone thought about you before you arrived.

Telcos and banks, on the other hand, have perfected the art of making you want to leave as quickly as possible.

They are dumb pipes and safe vaults. Essential. Invisible. Noticed only when they fail.

The Shift That Needs to Happen

What if a telco store felt like a creator sanctuary? A place where a young content creator could walk in, test 5G multi-camera streaming, get hands-on help, and leave empowered, not just sold another data plan?

What if your telco gave you a simple, transparent view of your digital life, not a confusing bill, but something that showed you clearly and honestly what you consumed, what it cost, and what it was truly worth? The way  

Chagee tells you exactly what is in your cup?

What if a bank branch became a life-stage lab, not a place with intimidating counters, but warm, flexible spaces where a young couple could walk in and build their entire path to homeownership together, with AI tools, with empathy, with care?

And what if there was a co-branded Chagee and bank experience, where financial tools were embedded inside a space where people already wanted to be? Imagine a beautiful annual or once in two year ritual where you visit to renew your telco contract.  

These are not wild ideas. They are simply what happens when you stop thinking about transactions and start thinking about moments.

The Numbers That Say It All

The market has already passed its verdict. The better than average telco generated an ROIC of roughly 5-6 percent in 2025. Chagee, listed on the NYSE under the ticker CHA since April 2025, reported an ROIC of 25 percent in the same period.

One is managing infrastructure. The other is orchestrating experiences.

The market knows exactly which one it prefers.

If that single comparison does not make the case for why our biggest utilities need to urgently rethink how they show up at the last mile, I am not sure what will.

The Lesson I'm Taking Forward

Chagee taught me, through multiple visits, a beautifully designed bag, a star on a cup, and a drink that was still the perfect temperature when I got home, that even the most ordinary commodity becomes extraordinary when wrapped in empathy, transparency, and attention to detail.

The utility era is over. Customers no longer choose based on infrastructure alone. They choose based on how you make them feel.

Telcos and banks have the reach, the trust, and the resources. What they are missing is the will to show up differently at the last mile, in the moments that matter most to real people, in real life.

I am already looking forward to my next Chagee visit.

And I am genuinely, sincerely hoping that the next time I walk into a telco store, I feel even a fraction of that same warmth.

That's not too much to ask. Is it?