Deaf-In-Business

“This is what I call ikigai,” chirps Dr Allen Teh, founder of Deaf-In-Business (DIB) café that employs over 80% of its staff from the deaf and disabled community. “As soon as one of my crew members, got his pay, he bought an iPhone. Not a single thanks to me,” he complains jokingly with a hearty giggle. Dr Allen loves to joke, as a way to cope with the stress and oftentimes madness of running a place specifically to help the deaf community, without any form of support from the government.

“Why does he do it?” one would ask. Dr Allen wakes up in the morning motivated by a grand ambition, which is to be the largest employer of deaf persons in Malaysia. It’s not something he hasn’t done before. In 1985, Dr Allen ran a KFC outlet along Jalan Imbi that was staffed with deaf crew. What he learnt from his first foray into the deaf and dumb employment industry, he utilised to start his café. It’s working well as the café has been around since 2011. It has survived the debilitating Covid lockdowns which turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The Covid lockdowns turned DIB into a profitable venture which had previously been sustained by Dr Allen’s own money.

Training the deaf crew has been challenging, to say the least. Most of the deaf looking for employment at DIB café came with low IQ and EQ skills which adds to the difficulties in training them. It takes more than patience to persevere in this tough business. Dr Allen calls it “God’s Calling” for him to run DIB and arm his deaf employees with the necessary life skills to carry on living life in dignity and independently.

It is lunch time. The café is getting crowded with a long queue forming, with patrons ordering specialties like Chicken Chop and Kung Pao Chicken. Most of these patrons are regulars, office workers from the Gamuda building where DIB is housed. As far as DIB is concerned, politicians come and go, often paying nothing more than lip service. It’s the community that has supported DIB all along – the church, loyal customers and Gamuda who generously donated aircon units for the café.

Despite the overwhelming hurdles faced in running DIB, Dr Allen takes a step forward each day. He recently purchased AI spectacles equipped with a microphone to translate audio into words and sentences that can be read by his deaf crew, to help them in their work. “Don’t treat them as disabled. Treat them normally as you would anyone,” he says.

As for DIB, having survived over the years, clearly Dr Allen must had done something right. Trained deaf crew can at least look forward to a future with confidence, as they will be well-equipped to make the best of other opportunities that await them after their stint at DIB.