Rollney’s profit margins fell to 6%, so it bet on robots instead of more stores

⁠The one-man F&B biz sells over 2,000 chimney cakes a month

Hungary’s official national dessert, kürtőskalács (also known as kurtos), is not exactly a familiar sight in Singapore. The chimney-shaped pastry is characterised by a caramelised crust wrapped around a hollow, pillowy centre.

One of the few places you can find it is at VivoCity, where Rollney has been selling the Hungarian treat since 2024.

According to founder Narresh Babu, kurtos remains virtually unknown in Singapore. But he’s betting that’s about to change.

We spoke with Narresh about how he brought the brand to Singapore, built it beyond a single dessert shop, and where Rollney is headed next.

Rollney was first founded in Malaysia

Rollney was originally founded in Malaysia in 2017 by Tan Yee Ke, who had fallen in love with kurtos during a trip to Hungary and spent three months there learning to bake them.

His idea was to pair the cylindrical pastry with soft serve ice cream, blending Hungarian baking with Asian dessert preferences. The brand eventually grew to 12 outlets across various states like Kuala Lumpur, Johor Bahru, and Perak.

Rollney Singapore launched in Jan 2024 when Narresh, a friend of Yee Ke, joined him through a joint venture. Narresh became director of the Singapore business, overseeing its local operations and international expansion independently of Rollney Malaysia.

He invested S$260,000 into the Singapore operation, with 60% coming from his own savings and the remaining 40% from a family loan. His relatives later told him to keep the money for expansion instead.

How Rollney makes its signature kurtos

Each Rollney kurtos starts with a sweet, yeasted dough that is portioned and hand-wrapped around a traditional wooden spit. After proofing, the dough goes into a customised vertical oven, where multiple rolls can be baked at once.

Each one is made to order and takes around three to five minutes to bake.

The roll is filled immediately after it comes out of the oven. Crunchy toppings and compote are layered into the hollow centre before soft serve is added on top, followed by the customer’s choice of toppings.

There are more than 30 options, ranging from Milo powder and pistachio sauce to lemon pie sauce, Oreo crumbs and seasonal specials.

The soft serve is also made in-house daily at Rollney’s central kitchen.

We do not buy from suppliers, but produce our own ice cream, so we know the quality of the ice cream is different from any other soft serve.

Narresh Babu

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A one-man F&B show

Rollney started with a humble 300 sq ft store at VivoCity.

The first three months were promising. Then, sales started to dip.

“It doesn’t matter if you’ve got a good product, a fun store or a nice concept. It doesn’t mean people will just come in and buy,” Narresh said. “Awareness is the biggest key for everything.”

Narresh began putting more time into Rollney Singapore’s social media in Jul 2024, and sales gradually recovered.

But getting customers through the door was only part of the challenge. The shop’s average profit margin was between 25% and 28% in 2024, according to Narresh, but fell to 6% in 2026.

With an average customer spend of S$5 to S$8, the economics of running a physical F&B outlet were also difficult. Narresh estimated that Rollney needed roughly twice the daily transactions of a restaurant to cover the overheads of five staff and rent.

Rather than opening more outlets or switching to a different product, Narresh started looking for ways to make the same product work harder.

When he ran the numbers for a second physical store, he realised that the cost would be roughly equivalent to deploying six soft-serve vending machines.

That comparison led Rollney Singapore in a very different direction.

A new way to sell soft serve

In Nov 2025, Narresh invested S$125,000 to deploy five machines.

He said they were the first vending machines in Singapore to use a robotic arm to serve ice cream from scratch within the unit.

Unlike a physical outlet, each machine could be placed in a different location to reach different customer groups. And if a site underperformed, Narresh could simply move the machine elsewhere without being locked into a long-term lease or having to hire additional staff.

The machines also offered something a traditional vending machine couldn’t: a bit of spectacle. The robotic arm has become a draw in itself, with Narresh noticing that children in particular get excited when they see it in action.

Building multiple businesses around one dessert

Rollney’s answer to the challenges of running a small F&B outlet was not simply to sell more kurtos. It was to find more ways to make money from the same product.

Today, the business has four revenue streams: its physical VivoCity outlet, its own fleet of soft serve vending machines, a vending machine franchise model, and event rentals.

The VivoCity store remains the brand’s public face and the only place where its kurtos rolls are made. But even that is being reworked. The current store will close on Sept 5 and reopen in Oct as a much smaller 20 to 40 sq ft kiosk, allowing Rollney to maintain its presence at VivoCity while cutting its rental costs.

The bigger bet, however, has been on vending machines. Rollney’s own machines dispense fresh soft serve from S$3 a cup, with sales growing by around 3% to 4% month-on-month. They have sold between 20,000 and 25,000 cups to date.

Narresh then realised he could sell more than just ice cream through the machines—he could sell the machines themselves.

Rollney now offers the vending machines as a franchise, charging operators S$28,000 per unit. In return, the company takes care of the operational work, including cleaning, maintenance, servicing and refills. The model gives franchisees a way into F&B without having to deal with the staffing, kitchen and day-to-day demands of running a traditional outlet.

Servicing costs around S$6,000 per run and covers 12 to 15 machines at a time. As more machines join the network, those costs can be spread across a larger base.

There are now 30 franchisees operating Rollney vending machines across Singapore, with the network on track to reach 50 machines by Sept.

Rollney’s fourth revenue stream comes from event rentals, where the machines are brought to corporate events and private functions. It gives the company another source of income while also putting the brand in front of potential customers beyond its usual retail locations.

In the span of a few years, Narresh has effectively built several businesses around one dessert. The kurtos may still be unfamiliar to many Singaporeans, but Rollney is no longer relying on customers walking into a shop to discover it.

A business refusing to stay still

One of the more interesting aspects of Rollney Singapore is how quickly Narresh can take an idea from concept to counter.

The latest example was the Milo Dinosaur Kurtos, a limited-time National Day special that was conceived, tested and launched within three days.

Narresh’s process starts with the occasion. He thinks about what Singaporeans associate with it, then works backwards to see whether those flavours can be translated into a kurtos or ice cream combination.

“Milo Dinosaur is the first thing that tourists come here to try. So I came up with the Milo Dinosaur Kurtos,” he said.

The same thinking went into the Kaya Toast Kurtos, which combines Hokkaido ice cream with pandan kaya and sugar breadcrumbs for crunch.

That speed is partly a product of how closely Narresh is involved in the business. There is no purchasing team or R&D committee to run ideas through.

“The good thing about being so involved is there’s no approval process in between,” he said. “I decide everything.”

He sources the ingredients, tastes them individually and together, works out whether the flavours and textures fit, and calculates whether the final product can be sold at a price customers will accept. If it works, it goes on the menu. If it doesn’t, he drops it.

That approach has allowed Rollney to experiment at a pace that would be harder for a larger F&B operation. During the 2026 World Cup, for instance, the brand came up with 10 different kurtos flavours inspired by 10 popular footballing nations.

The experimentation appears to have translated into a steady volume of sales. Rollney Singapore currently sells around 2,000 to 2,500 chimney cakes a month.

But Narresh’s ambitions extend beyond creating more flavours. He is targeting 100 vending machines across Singapore by Jan 2027, followed by another two to three physical outlets by the end of 2027.

For him, growth is not simply about how many stores Rollney can open.

“Some people feel they measure the success of a shop by how many outlets they have, but they don’t see the behind-the-scenes of the hard work behind just one single store,” Narresh said.

Rollney Singapore has come a long way from the 300 sq ft shop where it started—and Narresh’s next phase of growth looks increasingly like it will happen outside the four walls of a traditional F&B outlet.

• Learn more about Rollney Singapore here.
• Read other articles we’ve written on Singaporean businesses here.

Featured Image Credit: Rollney Singapore