How cup sleeve events became a win-win for fans and cafes
In Singapore’s competitive F&B landscape, consistency is currency. For many small, local cafés and event spaces, relying on fluctuating daily foot traffic presents a major existential threat.
Some businesses have found an unlikely solution to this challenge: passionate fandoms.
Cup sleeve events, in which fan organisers create free, custom-printed cardboard sleeves for customers who purchase a drink at a particular cafe, first became popular in South Korea along with the Hallyu wave.
Hosting these pop-ups has since emerged as another revenue stream for cafes and F&B businesses in Singapore. The key to success? Building win-win relationships with fans themselves.
Rather than profit, these fan organisers are driven by an intrinsic motivation to provide opportunities for like-minded people to gather, enjoy, and celebrate milestones of their favourite idols, actors, or characters from games, television shows, and movies.
Vulcan Post speaks with a fan organiser and local F&B establishments to break down the mechanics behind this win-win relationship, including how these events are organised.
Leveraging fandoms for visibility and revenue
As a fan herself, Aza has organised and attended similar fan-organised pop-ups and cup sleeve events at other cafes in Singapore. But as much as she enjoyed herself, there was a gap in the scene that she was itching to fill.
“I notice that there weren’t many Halal-friendly options available, and the existing venues were usually quite expensive.”
She decided to leverage her job at local fast-casual restaurant, The Tree Cafe, and proposed offering a cup sleeve event package to the chain’s owner, Charmaine, who also shared an interest in K-pop.
Charmaine agreed, and they hosted their first event in Aug 2022.
“Our followers started asking how they could book the café for their own events, which helped us grow even more. We reached out through social media, joined fan community chats, and shared details of our early events so admins could see what we offered,” Aza explained.
By opening their restaurant space for events, The Tree Cafe has attracted new customers, maintained steady traffic even during slower hours, and significantly boosted the cafe’s overall visibility beyond the mainstream audience.
Lena Teng similarly turned her love for anime into a business opportunity. She was inspired by a visit to an anime-themed cafe in Singapore and wanted to create a space for youths to let out their inner otaku without the fear of being judged.
This led her to leave her full-time finance job to launch Daijoubu, an anime-themed cafe at Singapore Management University (SMU), in mid-2022.
“I didn’t start Daijoubu with the hopes that it would draw in enough profits to replace my salary. It was more to fulfil a life goal of having my own business, and there being no better time to start than ‘now’.”
Opening Daijoubu has also exposed Lena to once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. This included being the first in Singapore and Southeast Asia to be the official host for the 10th-anniversary celebration for the Japanese anime That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime (Tensura).
That opportunity ultimately put the cafe’s name on the map, attracting the attention of a few interest groups to organise more fan cafe events. Over time, the scale of the events grew beyond casual fan gatherings to elaborate events.
“I learnt that fans don’t only attend official events – the love is so strong, fans want to attend any event that celebrates their favourite game or shows.”
These events are more than just a cash grab for fans
Having these spaces for fans to celebrate has also inspired them to embark on passion projects, organising their own cup sleeve events. This was the case for Kyra Nicole, who started her own channel, eightsevents, to host pop-ups for Xu Minghao, known to fans as The8 from the K-pop boy group Seventeen.
“I wanted to do an event, so I’m just going to do it. Didn’t really think much about the money,” she shared. “I didn’t even know how much I made back, [or] if I even covered the cost, but it was okay. It was really for the passion of wanting to hold an event for my bias’ birthday.”
Followers of these fandoms have created their own spaces for updates and news.
Natalie Teo shared that she looks for pop-up announcements on Instagram and Telegram fan communities. This includes @acgeventsmasterlist on Instagram, which compiles themed cafes and events into a Google Sheet to keep fans updated on the latest concepts.
“They’re mostly fan-led and often not-for-profit, created by people who genuinely love the IP/franchise/characters. Seeing that passion translated into a physical space feels very special, and it’s meaningful to experience something built by fans, for fans!” she exclaimed.
Sasha Nicole Nair also added that she has received random invites from others in the same fandom at conventions and often attends these events with Natalie. “You can really tell that the event was created for people to enjoy rather than just a simple cash grab.”
Like many fan organisers, hosting her own events also created opportunities for Kyra to bond with other fans, from regulars who always showed up to people who made her event their first fan cafe experience. “It feels like we’re also doing something for the community to celebrate the people that they like.”
That said, the 23-year-old, who has a full-time job as a kindergarten teacher, shared that organising these events requires her to pay out of pocket, having once spent around S$800 for an event.
Just like any event, Kyra acknowledged that these costs often escalate, no matter how hard she tries to save: from paying the venue deposit to printing the cupsleeves and purchasing the merchandise and decor. She has since learnt to manage her expenditure to continue doing pop-ups and interacting with fans.
“As much as it’s really a passion project, we want to share everything, money is money, we also don’t want to lose so much money from this,” emphasized Kyra. “Whatever profit that we get from an event, it gets rolled over as funds for the next event.”
Flexible partnerships for the win
Since cup sleeve events emerged in Singapore in 2018, the number and frequency have increased. According to Cafe Event in SG, one of the popular Telegram channels for cafe events in the country, an average of 15-20 events are held every month from Sep to Nov 2025. The Tree Cafe’s online event calendar also showed that events were held weekly for certain months.
“Ever since I started Daijoubu, I’ve seen fan cafes sprout out every other week at various locations, so I don’t think we need more of those,” Lena pointed out.
Given the frequency of these events, business owners like Lena, Aza, and Charmaine need to work closely with the fan organisers to ensure each event runs smoothly, whether by supporting their social media promotions or by offering customised menus.
Organisers also need to continually innovate to create new, memorable activities for participants. Aside from selling merchandise and fan packs, eightsevents also offers lucky draws for fans and even introduced kuji, a Japanese sure-win lucky draw.
“We’ve never really seen anyone in the cafe event scene do a kuji lucky draw, normally it’s just like a gacha or scratch card. So I was like ‘okay, let’s bring it in,’” said Kyra.
While F&B remains the main bread and butter for The Tree Cafe, Daijoubu has since pivoted from a traditional cafe model to an event space after its lease at SMU ended. Lena cited high overhead costs and competition from larger brands and franchises as reasons for the pivot, noting that they are difficult to manage on her own.
“I think the only way we could have survived is through building up our base of loyal regular customers and by continuously running themed events.”
Daijoubu is currently located at Lavander and charges S$50 per hour, giving organisers the flexibility to arrange their own catering or F&B takeaways. Though Lena has shared that some groups have commissioned her to design themed menus and dishes for their event, where she charges an additional fee.
“The most recent menu item I’ve helped a group create is chocolate spaghetti,” she said with a laugh. “It is a much more manageable pricing model since the overhead costs are ad-hoc and I am able to generate income from other non-thematic events as well.”
As fans themselves, these business owners can empathise with the need to provide more opportunities for fans to meet face-to-face, and they rely on the community’s enthusiasm to keep them going. In addition, these gatherings can fill gaps for smaller establishments struggling to fill tables, and having more than one use case helps strengthen the business’s long-term viability.
As long as fans continue to seek spaces to belong and cafés remain willing partners, Singapore’s fan-event ecosystem will continue to evolve, one cup sleeve at a time.
- Learn more about our profiles here: eightsevents, The Tree Cafe, Daijoubu.
- Read more articles we’ve written on Singaporean businesses here.
Also Read: Cosplay’s rapid rise in Singapore is bringing joy—and attracting the wrong attention
Featured Image Credit: The Tree Cafe, eightsevents
Last modified: December 5, 2025
About the Author: Eric L.
