Pressed By Cheeselads: Trio opens 24-hour self-checkout cheese shop with pressed sourdough toasties in a petrol station

Run out of cheese at 2am? You can now pick up a wedge or two from a Shell petrol station in Siglap.

Local cheese purveyor Cheeselads has opened its first kiosk concept, Pressed By Cheeselads, at Shell petrol station along Upper East Coast Road. The compact takeaway outfit serves pressed sourdough toasties from a staffed counter, while an unmanned, self-checkout section stocks packaged artisanal cheeses, nougats, and pre-made charcuterie boards around the clock.

It is an unexpected move for founders Alfred Low, 35, Leonard Teng, 36, and Chloe Lee, 35, who run a full-fledged cheese shop, restaurant and bar at Tyrwhitt Road. Then again, conventional has never quite been their thing.

Alfred is animated and mischievous, frequently going off-script to crack a joke. Chloe, who is married to Leonard, punctuates the conversation with infectious laughter, while her husband is no less cheeky, albeit with a drier delivery.

When asked how the three met, Leonard introduces Alfred as his childhood friend and Chloe as his wife, before adding, with a straight face, “current wife”. The others immediately protest.

Shell approached them to open a cheese shop

The collaboration began when Shell approached the trio about setting up a cheese shop at its Siglap station.

There was just one problem: They did not think selling packaged cheese alone would be sufficient. “Selling cheese alone is difficult in Singapore,” says Leonard matter-of-factly. He handles the business development behind the homegrown micro-enterprise.

Instead, the trio decided to pair the retail selection with something more familiar and suitable for everyday eating: hot pressed sourdough sandwiches.

“Toasties are an everyday food for most people. It is comfort food,” explains Alfred, who oversees the food options at Cheeselads. “It goes well with cheese, and we already have all the cheeses in-house, so we can play around with different flavours and ingredients.”

The trio had initially toyed with a build-your-own mac-and-cheese concept, where customers could select their sauce and protein. They eventually dropped it after deciding that mac and cheese was not something most people would reach for regularly.

“No one in Singapore would eat mac-and-cheese daily,” Chloe, Cheeselads’ sensible marketing honcho, says. 

Meanwhile, sandwiches felt more accessible. Its name, “Pressed”, is a play on the two sides of the business: pressed sourdough toasties and hard-pressed cheeses.

Located opposite the now-defunct The Cheese Deli

There is another curious detail about the new location: Pressed By Cheeselads sits almost directly across the road from where The Cheese Deli once sat — one of Cheeselads’ former competitors. 

The location was not part of some calculated turf war, especially since The Cheese Deli shuttered in March 2025. 

(Plus, the trio says that they have since become friends!) 

“We are competitor-turned-friends,” says Leonard, with a laugh. “They are really good cheese purveyors.”

Taking over the vacant premises did come to mind. But Leonard is quick to add that taking over the former Cheese Deli unit would have been difficult to justify. 

“The rent was relatively high,” he says. “Running a business reliant solely on retail cheese is challenging.”

Siglap’s dining scene and residential mix have long made it a natural fit for specialty food businesses, with another cheese specialist CheeseDotCom operating across the street. But for the trio, the existing demand did not justify yet another cheese shop.

With the Shell station in the picture, the concept became more viable. The shared space meant lower rental costs and the petrol kiosk’s round-the-clock opening hours allowed Cheeselads products to be available throughout the night, even without onsite staff.

From cheese platters to a petrol-station kiosk

Cheeselads began during the Covid-19 pandemic, after Alfred returned from the UK to attend Leonard and Chloe’s wedding and found himself unable to fly back.

While studying product design at Central Saint Martins in London, Alfred had encountered a much wider cheese culture. Visits to various cheese shops in London seeded the idea of opening something similar in Singapore.

He approached Leonard, who was then working in banking alongside Chloe. The couple had already been thinking about starting their own business, and Leonard’s response was simple: “Just do it.”

They could not afford to begin with the full-fledged cheese restaurant Alfred had envisioned. Instead, Chloe suggested starting with cheese platters, which allowed customers to sample several varieties without committing to a large block of something unfamiliar.

Contrary to what some customers assume, Cheeselads was never a home-based business. The trio first borrowed storage space within an ice-cream shop, before moving into a commercial kitchen in Kovan once orders began coming in.

The operation eventually expanded from one unit to four, before the trio moved into its present two-storey shophouse at Tyrwhitt Road in 2022.

The flagship outlet functions as a retail cheese shop and restaurant by day, before taking on a livelier cheese-bar atmosphere in the evening. 

Pressed By Cheeselads, however, is a much faster, more portable take on the same ingredient.

They learnt about cheese along the way

None of the founders entered the business with formal cheesemongering experience.

Instead, they learnt by tasting extensively and working closely with importers, producers, and professional cheesemongers around the world. They now source cheeses largely from the UK and Europe, with Chloe overseeing the selection and import process. Some varieties are also aged in-house at their Tyrwhitt Road outlet.

The trio’s differing palates proved useful. One gravitates towards milder cheeses, another sits somewhere in the middle, while the third prefers stronger and funkier varieties.

“We have three different palates, from light all the way to strong,” Alfred explains. “That helped us understand what different people in Singapore might prefer.”

More importantly, they learnt to translate the sometimes intimidating language of cheese into terms that laymen can understand.

Instead of beginning with milk cultures, regions, and maturation processes, they describe unfamiliar varieties using recognisable local flavours. A particularly savoury cheese might be compared with salted fish, while a pungent one could be likened to durian.

“We digest a lot of the professional terms and make them easier for everyone to understand,” Alfred says.

At the Tyrwhitt Road shop, customers are encouraged to sample cheeses before buying them. That is not possible at an unmanned petrol-station fridge, so the selection at Pressed comprises relatively approachable, hand-picked favourites, with tasting notes printed on the unassuming tags.

The main restaurant has stocked as many as 170 to 180 varieties at once, although the trio has since pared that number down to around 130 to 140, depending on availability.

Six years of working with a friend and spouse

The three have now worked together for about six years.

Leonard acknowledges that running a company with both a childhood friend and his wife is not always easy. There have been disagreements and arguments, but they try to remain transparent and separate their business disputes from their relationships outside work.

“Work is work,” he says. “We try to be professional, and we don’t really bring work home.”

Pressed sourdough toasties with proper cheese

The advantage of running a cheese restaurant and import business is that the team has plenty of fromage to experiment with. The toasties at the petrol kiosk are developed by the kitchen team at Tyrwhitt Road and assembled using imported sourdough as the base. “We have a wide variety of cheeses at our restaurant, and we can use them in our creations,” Alfred says.

The mortadella pesto (from S$8.90 for half), also Alfred’s favourite, combines deeply savoury mortadella with herbaceous (and nutty) housemade pesto. Crushed pistachios and dried cranberry bits add brightness and texture. It’s sublime with the lightly tangy sourdough.

The tuna melt (from S$6.90 for half) is lush but fishy. Smashed tuna and Kewpie mayonnaise form a creamy base, while red onions and sliced gherkins flicker through with bite and acidity. The special cheese blend features mozzarella, provolone, cheddar, and raclette that create that savoury, stretchy pull.

Caramelised onion grilled cheese & ham (from S$7.90 for half) is another yummy classic. This sandwich pairs chicken ham and cheese with caramelised onions prepared at the main kitchen. Rather than using a pre-made product, the team sweats out whole white onions for at least four hours, which are later added to the sarnie.

The toasties also give Cheeselads room to rotate in less conventional cheeses. One seasonal creation is the Hot Honey Lazuli (from S$7.90 for half), which features the funky Lazuli blue cheese from the Netherlands. 

A standout, the grainy, savoury blue cheese is paired with spicy hot honey (that is made by soaking chilli flakes into heated honey) and buttered sourdough. It is Leonard’s favourite. “Not everyone likes blue cheese, but I really, really like Lazuli,” he insists.

Towards the end of the interview, the trio jokingly suggest that Pressed By Cheeselads could be the world’s first 24-hour artisanal cheese shop inside a petrol station. Almost immediately, all three begin qualifying the claim. Perhaps it is the first in Singapore. Maybe just the East Coast. 

What is certain is that cheese shoppers in Siglap no longer need to wait for conventional retail hours. Whether it is a wedge for tomorrow’s breakfast or an impulsive late-night addition to a supper spread, the fridge is open.

For more ideas on what to eat, check out Gotti Italiano’s new S$38 weekend brunch, or Tara Na! By Easy Eatz, a former home-based business that now serves up hearty Filipino fare in Punggol.