weelittletimmy

For those asking, I'd rather not say how to find my place, because I prefer to be able to speak my mind freely on this site without it coming back to bite me in the ass one day. It's a survival mechanism from working in the current tech industry where you can lose your job for something you wrote 10 years ago, lol. I was already in Thailand because covid made my job remote-only and I was attracted by the weather, beaches, cost of living, and safety. I found out the rent on a shop near my house was really cheap (10k/month), and gears started turning in my head. I go into this in my original thread, it has always been a desire of mine since I was a student, but I could never afford this in a western country. I haven't decided if I'll stay in Thailand. If I do, I will do other small businesses like this, and hopefully one day can quit my day job and just manage my places. If I don't, I'll sell and leave. "Tiny" was my original plan, for the first place I planned to rent for just a juicebar. The place I ended up renting is bigger, although still on the small side. I can seat 20 people, and I have space outside to add a standing counter like bars have if it ever becomes packed. I've seen good fast-foods blow up and expand, including my favorite restaurant back home. Rent is low IMO so I'm happy. No, I'm alone with the Thai staff. You're right that there's a big cultural difference, and I feel the need for a manager, but I can't afford one right now. One of the staff was hired as half-manager half-assistant cook (because he speaks very good english), but he didn't turn out to be the manager type, he's useless at it, and I don't have the heart to replace him yet. They lie about the smallest things, it's almost like even after months of nice behavior from me, they're afraid I'm gonna punish them. Just today one of them was late (only the 2nd time since being hired), when I asked her what time she showed up at work she lied and said she came 1 hour earlier than she did. I sat her down and explained "why bother lying about this? Just say the truth, it's not like you're late every day. When I'm late I just tell my boss I'll be late, it's no big deal, it happens. If it happens frequently and it becomes a problem, I'll tell you." I said this (well, Google Translate) in a friendly tone and with a smile to let her know she's not in trouble, but she was guarded the whole time. There's a few puzzling things like this where I keep having to repeat myself and it makes me think "this must be a Thai culture thing". I'm also worried some of my behavior might be accidentally offensive. Those that frequently ask me for advances, I keep grilling them about what they're spending their money on, ask to see their bank account weekly. I don't care that it wouldn't be proper in a western country to ask your employees how they spend their money, if we're going to be asking for advances then this becomes more of a paternal relationship, and I'm going to want to know why you're still broke after 6 months of employment, when you live with your parents for free and eat at work for free.

Good point, it could be that. We'll see how things fare after next high season, when I have made more marketing effort, have food delivery, etc. One thing I feel bad about is, what happens to my staff? I've known most of them since opening. They quit their jobs to join me, and can barely make ends meet. If I had hired them from the get-go agreeing that it was only for 6 months, it would be an easier decision. I actually have put very little time except during the opening weeks, because I am busy with my full-time job. So it's more of a hobby. I put in maybe 1 hour a day, and sometimes not even that. The only reason this business is open is because any loss is exceeded by the monthly salary of my remote job. If this was going to be my only source of income, then I'd switch to lower-stakes alternative: multiple small juice stands. I'm actually planning to do that if I end up staying in Thailand next year.

Thanks! It blows my mind that Kasikorn's own employees at their branch didn't know this. The first one wasn't sure, called another employee, and that one said "no it's only PDF".

Last year I wrote this post: I ended up opening a breakfast and juicebar place. I'd like to give some random thoughts on how it went in case it helps others: The business made profit from the very beginning, since it opened during high season. It did about 4000 baht/day profit until March, where it gradually decreased until break even point. It lost money in April and May, now in June I'm back at breaking even. April and May almost cancelled out the profit made in the initial months. I initially planned for 350k setup costs. In the end, it was about 420k setup, which includes corporation, my visa and work permit, renovation, furniture, kitchen equipment. I also changed the concept to add meals, not just a juicebar, so I needed more kitchen equipment. I initially planned 25k/month for rent + 1 staff (150k for 6 months). (Note there are more fees, discussed below). It ended up being 43k/mo, because I rented a place twice the size at twice the price, and also hired 3 staff instead of 1. And even those staff, since I was hiring them in high season, I had to pay over market rate. Additionally there is social security fee for each employee (5k/month total), electrical bill (4-5k/month with always-on aircon), accountant's fees (3k/month), internet (700/month), and a couple of other more minor fees which you should plan for. Due to repeated warnings from many people about the unreliability of thai staff (that they can just stop coming in overnight and not answer your calls), I ended up hiring 1 extra staff, even though it only takes 2 people to comfortably run the place with our customer count. Last couple of months I've been in a low season slump with very few customers. My staff are idle most of the time. But I don't have the heart to lay off one of them since they live paycheck to paycheck, and would likely not be able to find another job at this time. I can take the hit, they can't. I know this isn't how you run a business, but what can I say, I'm not a real businessman. Let's see if next high season makes up for this slump, especially with the improvements I have planned. If I'm honest, in terms of food the place is a solid 7/10 to me right now. Review score is 4.1/5, with the sole 1/5 review being a Thai person I don't know and who never came here. Customers are all expats and mostly repeat visitors, but tourists are rare. I need to improve the outside sign, put signs of fruits and whatnot. I haven't been able to do any marketing or decoration due to lack of time with my full-time day job. I have not yet added food delivery even though it's a must during low season. Paperwork takes time, and dealing with Thai people is extremely slow and inefficient. Anyway, for people who might do this, know that you need a company bank account and a VAT number to apply for Grab. I had been using my personal bank account this whole time and had no VAT so I wasn't ready. Only Thai people can apply to Grab with a personal bank account and open a Grab account instantly. I generally sell meals at 200% cost. So if it costs 50 baht to make, I sell it at 150. The exception is coffee, which I sell at 700-1000% profit. All my Thai staff live paycheck to paycheck. They will get paid on the 31st, and one week later all the money is gone and they are likely to beg for a small advance, which I give out occasionally depending on circumstances (which might be lies for all I know), but I made it a point never to do it in consecutive months. I will soon switch to weekly salary payments because giving them a full month's salary in one go is like handing a 7yo kid a bag of candy and telling him to eat only one per day. I'm sorry if this offends any Thai people reading this, I base my beliefs on my personal experience, not any prejudice, and my belief is that Thai people are financially irresponsible. I realize this probably only applies to working class Thai people. Broke people living paycheck to paycheck will steal from you. Early on I had to fire a staffer I found out was stealing. Another one I had put in charge of the emergency change money (so we don't need to do a bank run in the middle of the day when we run out of change), used some of the backup change to pay for personal expenses when she became broke, figuring she'd pay it back in 3 days when she got her salary. Make sure you accept electronic payments ASAP to decrease usage of cash, use an electronic POS like Ocha, and have a security camera aimed at the register to counter bad behavior. Do a random spot check every week, which is how I caught both situations. Social media is important in this day and age, and how most young people find the place. They'll take a photo of their food before eating, post it on Instagram while tagging the place, then their followers might visit it based on that. It's mainly 40+yo people finding it randomly by walking around. Make absolutely certain you set up Google Maps and Instagram (link to Maps location). I'm not sure if Facebook had any impact. Overall it's been a pleasant experience, though it's not doing as well as I hoped. I think there's a lot of potential and I just need to put in more of my own time to achieve that potential. Thanks to the people who provided non-snarky advice in the last thread.

I opened a restaurant a few months back and need to create a company bank account. I'd like to be able to quickly analyze the transaction data, for example "show me all incoming Grab payments in the month of August 2023" or "show me all incoming Foodpanda payments". To do this, I need my account's transaction history to be viewable in Excel, where this query would be a simple date + account name filter. I spoke to the customer service people at Krungsri and Kasikorn, and they both said they only let you export transactions in PDF format, which cannot be used in Excel. My lawyer who owns two restaurants herself told me she opens a different bank account for every restaurant and every delivery service, so she can do the accounting more easily by seeing the bank account's totals. This seems much more busywork to me than having a single account and simply doing filters in Excel in 5 seconds. In case you're wondering why I don't copy-paste the PDF text, I got my hands on a friend's statements from Krungsri and Kasikorn. Kasikorn's PDFs paste into a single cell with the column and entries in the wrong order compared to the header columns. Krungsri has a column called "Withdraw/Deposit" where the values are actually written spaced over 2 columns as a positive number, so whether it's a withdrawal or a deposit the line is "previous-column 100", making it impossible to automate the import. If all the banks are like this then I'm thinking my only option here is to have a friend write a computer script to convert a Kasikorn PDF into CSV data, but I feel I'm getting ahead of myself here, it would be mind-boggling if there's really no CSV export for a company's transaction data in Thailand. My bank's website back home has had a CSV export option since I was a teen, even for personal accounts. Does everyone else have a data entry clerk doing things by hand or something?