Ibu Rahun Suparman's Pizza

From migrant worker to Suparman Pizza

My life journey has not been easy. It began in 2014 when I decided to work overseas as a migrant worker in Malaysia, and later in Brunei. As a single parent, my biggest motivation and goal was simple: to provide for my child’s future and daily needs. However, life abroad was not always easy, and due to difficult circumstances and incompatibility, I eventually returned to Lombok.

For seven months, I tried starting my own business, but unfortunately, it failed. During that time, I took on various odd jobs just to survive. When I returned from Brunei, the 2018 Lombok earthquake became a major turning point in my life. It made me realise that working in my own country, closer to family, was far more valuable than anything else.

My Gili story started….

In September 2018, a friend invited me to Gili Trawangan. At that time, the island was still in pretty poor condition, filled with debris, rubble and ruins left behind by the earthquake. It was there that I met Pak Suparman, who was already working on a small warung but had not yet started a business. That meeting became the beginning of what is now known as Suparman’s Pizza.

Our first steps were not only about creating a business, but also about caring for the environment we wanted to work in. Pak Suparman had a dream, but he had never tried it before: planting trees. After seeing an island full of rubble after the earthquakes, he made it a personal mission to ‘plant more oxygen’, to benefit the island’s beauty, the community, and the planet. He even travelled to Bali looking for funding to begin a reforestation movement, ‘Suparman’s Treevolution’. When he returned from Bali, he brought back local food recipes, and together we started cooking soto ayam and other fine local favourites. We truly built everything from scratch, especially since it was my first experience working in the restaurant industry.

Innovations can start from rubble and reclaimed wood

The concept behind Suparman Pizza was born from the limitations around us. At the time, there was a huge amount of discarded wood from collapsed buildings after the earthquake. I took the initiative to collect the leftover wood and use it as fuel for our pizza oven. Unexpectedly, this became part of what made us unique and well known.

We embraced a rustic concept, using reclaimed wood as part of our identity. In the beginning, we even grew our all of own herbs and ingredients to ensure freshness, although today this has become more difficult due to drastic changes in land use on the island. From earthquake debris and discarded wood, we built more than just a business; we built a story of resilience and hope for the future.

Suparman’s Treevolution has planted over 8,000 trees on the Gili Islands from 2019 to 2024, when they had to move location. Many of his bright, colourful, shady trees can still be seen all over the island today!

The philosophy behind ibu Rauhun’s nasi tumpeng

At first, I made tumpeng just for fun, simply to celebrate a friend’s birthday. I made a simple one, but unexpectedly, after my friend, Om Benji, took photos of it, it went locally viral, and orders started coming in continuously, from staff parties to birthday celebrations. Even though I’m originally from Lombok, I spent a lot of time reading and learning about the deeper meaning of tumpeng in Javanese tradition.

For me, tumpeng is ultimately a symbol of gratitude to the Creator, a kind of blessed rice. If you look closely at its cone shape, it represents the journey of life and our struggles, starting from the very foundation and moving upward toward God. The philosophy is that the higher someone rises in life or success, the fewer people there will be around them, because at the peak, there is only one winner.

So every tumpeng I make is not just food, but a symbol of the greatness of struggle, gratitude, and prayer.

Ibu Rauhun creates her cosy home-cooked food in her warung “Suparman’s Pizza” on Jalan Ikan Hiu, Gili Trawangan. Be sure to stop by for the famous Soto Ayam or Tempe Mendoan.