Wine connection has gone downhill

[laban]

I have loved their concept ever since they opened, and have been to the new one in Chiang Mai and regularly go to K village, Rainhill and Silom branches in Bangkok. The two in Patong (banana walk & jingceylon) have gone downhill. Food is not what it used to be, bread is stale, red wine as cold as a beer should be, the mushrooms with my steak had obviously bee reheated several times, and the ratatouille was only aubergines and yellow peppers. The steak was very good though.

They also have reduced the number of waitresses, and had to wait for ages for service. Saying that, once you order it all comes in a few minutes.

I have become a disappointed fan. Allegedly, the owner lives in Phuket, he should visit his outlets more often.

[falkan]

send the owner a email?

[LivinginKata]

This was discussed here in the Phuket forum a month ago. I agree that the food quality and presentation has gone downhill. I used to be a regular for quite a few years. Have not returned for over a year. No plan to ever return.

[McFarang]

I agree used to go to the original Phuket one for a very tasty breakfast that was priced well but alas in their wisdom they stopped serving breakfasts. I also agree that the staff competency levels have taken a dramatic drop. Used to go for lunch from time to time but that has also taken a dive coupled with the staff its a no go area for me which is a shame considering how good it used to be.

[NomadJoe]

+1.

[Somtamnication]

I stopped going to the one in Chalong when the 59 baht pie I wanted after my lunch, increased to 89 baht because it was not take-away!!! <deleted> 'em!

[DonaldBattles]

I have know Michael the owner of all the Wine Connections in Thailand and also in Singapore for many years. He is a good Frenchman and a likable person. He is experiencing the same situation that I did. You can't be in 10 places at one time. When you hire new staff they seem to work OK for 4-6 months and then they start to slack off and act like they own the place. The business starts to suffer.

For restaurant owners they should always keep the following in mind for their staff, "If you have time to lean, you have time to clean" and "If you are not walking you are not working". It is hard to enforce these two principals in restaurants in Thailand unless you are standing over the staff. Don't be afraid of pissing your Thai wife's relatives off by insisting that they work. Three in a corner talking are hard to separate to go wait on tables.

Michael probably has the largest wine and distribution business in Thailand and it has grown well from one location. When he decided to put the bistros in his wine store he expected that the increased floor traffic from the bistros would increase the sale of wine. Unfortunately these are two totally different businesses. His wholesale business was really good. He stocked most of my wine store at Don's Mall in Phuket with quality wines. His best employee, Paul in Phuket has done a great job in Phuket for years taking care of the hotel and restaurant wine business. He is one of the best in the industry but only one man.

For those who are dissatisfied leave a small note in the cafe for Michael and am sure he will do his best to correct the situation. Give him another chance. Michael is not the only farang in Thailand that has this kind of problem

[eezergood]

I was in Jungceylon branch on Saturday - same problem, stale bread non responsive staff!

[phuketrichard]

try the one in Bang Tao, usually empty, so the service so good and the food quality is better than Junk Ceylon ( where i wont eat anymore)

[stevenl]

Don't blame it on the Thai staff Don.

[madeinguiri]

To the gentleman that knows the owner,

Please could you tell votre ami that microwave food is not on. For the prices they charge how can they possibly reheat the food? We used to eat there regularly but no more. We spoke to an active member of the staff and he told us that the food is always reheated. Would this happen in France, non. Why does he do it here. Honte sur vous

[madeinguiri]

Don,

If the Thai workers got the 'service charge' maybe they would work harder. how can the service charge not go to the staff? it should be called 'owner charge'.

[DonaldBattles]

I always divided the tips equally with the Thai staff. Even though they dropped and broke a loke of plates and issued many incorrect orders. To them the tips was like winning the lottery. It had nothing to do with the quality of the service. There are so many jobs in Phuket always open that if you push a staff member to do their work and take care of the customers they go down the road to a beer bar and work. Hard to keep people at work.

Regarding quality of food, this is a product of absentee management and nothing can be done about this. When the cat is away the mouse will play. However, when complaining you should write a note to Michael, leave it with the manager. Put your E-mail on the complaint and I think Michael will fix the problem. He is a results oriented person and am sure he wants things to be made right. If you don't complain to him then it is a waste of time.

I had 18 different farang employees in Phuket and never one of them could get the Thai staff to listen to them. They can't read, write or speak Thai so they are worthless working supervising Thai staff. They will listen to the owner but not another farang. Some of these farangs caused my entire kitchen staff to leave 2 times.

[stevenl]

Regarding quality of food, this is a product of absentee management and nothing can be done about this.

Sure there is, hire good staff, and if you can't find them/can't pay them/they don't exist don't expand and expand.

A very good example was your own place, it was IMO much better before you moved 150 meters to a much nicer location in a much nicer setting. But despite that the whole experience was IMO much less.

And for WC the same could apply: they have expanded too far, beyond their control.

Edited September 9, 2013 by stevenl

[madeinguiri]

Don,

I think is it brilliant that you share the tips. I was not referring to you in any way.

I was referring to Wine Connection. To their credit every time I have been to the one in Chalong on Chao Fa East the service has been very good. Much better than in many other places in Phuket. Which is why they deserve the service charge.

I understand that Micheal is your friend and you defend him. Loyaly is priceless. But micro wave and reheating food is below par. Which is why I shall never set foot in Wine Connection again. We used to love going there but I think it is unfair to charge what they do to reheat food.

[CiaranO]

I always divided the tips equally with the Thai staff. Even though they dropped and broke a loke of plates and issued many incorrect orders. To them the tips was like winning the lottery. It had nothing to do with the quality of the service. There are so many jobs in Phuket always open that if you push a staff member to do their work and take care of the customers they go down the road to a beer bar and work. Hard to keep people at work.

Regarding quality of food, this is a product of absentee management and nothing can be done about this. When the cat is away the mouse will play. However, when complaining you should write a note to Michael, leave it with the manager. Put your E-mail on the complaint and I think Michael will fix the problem. He is a results oriented person and am sure he wants things to be made right. If you don't complain to him then it is a waste of time.

I had 18 different farang employees in Phuket and never one of them could get the Thai staff to listen to them. They can't read, write or speak Thai so they are worthless working supervising Thai staff. They will listen to the owner but not another farang. Some of these farangs caused my entire kitchen staff to leave 2 times.

You see Donald this is where i fundamentally disagree with you. When you leave a service charge the presumption is its for the staff not for the owner. Broken plates, glasses, wrong orders etc should be covered by your set up of your restaurant and the policy you have within it. A restaurant with no policy on broken delf etc will have a high rate of carelessness and resulting in high volumes of breakages.

Your comment son Farang managers again is wrong - perhaps you have hired the wrong type of Farang manager with little Thai knowledge etc. I have seen it before and the results can be devastating for a business. Farang managers believing then can run a restaurant, bar, hotel in the same manner you would in there home country.

The bottom line with managers is that if your staff know that you know what you are talking about they will follow you - if they see you as a fake and BS Artists, simply put they wont.

[laban]

Don - if you have Michael's email or phone no (pm me) I will gladly put my points to him. I have run a business in Thailand myself so no it ain't easy.

I o like the wine connection and will carry on going to the ones where food, service and wine is good of course.

[DonaldBattles]

You correct all 18 farangs that I hired were wrong ones. they were educated, had great backgrounds in food butchery and management. Like I damn fool I assumed that they could work in a Thai environment while I was at another location. this took place over a 15 year period of time.

I finally learned if a farang was fluent in Thai and sensitive to Thai culture he already owned his own business and did not need to be working for wages for someone else. Too many farangs depend on their Thai wives or girlfriends to handle all Thai issues. This is a fast track to failure. When it comes to an issue between you and a Thai they will wessel out of the issue or take the Thai position and tell you some other story.

After 30 years here the longer I stay the less I know and will never know. I thought that studying everything at AUA 1 year 4 hours per day I had really reached a higher level of communicating. Then working up country only with Thais for 15 years. I thought I would really get smart, I did not. Everything changes here but nothing ever changes except farangs coming and then going back.

This is Part of a Poem by Rudyard Kipling.

Now it is not good for the Christian's health to hustle the Asian brown, For the Christian riles, and the Asian smiles and he weareth the Christian down; And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased, And the epitaph drear: "A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East."

How true it was.

Don

[Peterocket]

I always divided the tips equally with the Thai staff. Even though they dropped and broke a loke of plates and issued many incorrect orders. To them the tips was like winning the lottery. It had nothing to do with the quality of the service. There are so many jobs in Phuket always open that if you push a staff member to do their work and take care of the customers they go down the road to a beer bar and work. Hard to keep people at work.

Regarding quality of food, this is a product of absentee management and nothing can be done about this. When the cat is away the mouse will play. However, when complaining you should write a note to Michael, leave it with the manager. Put your E-mail on the complaint and I think Michael will fix the problem. He is a results oriented person and am sure he wants things to be made right. If you don't complain to him then it is a waste of time.

I had 18 different farang employees in Phuket and never one of them could get the Thai staff to listen to them. They can't read, write or speak Thai so they are worthless working supervising Thai staff. They will listen to the owner but not another farang. Some of these farangs caused my entire kitchen staff to leave 2 times.

I agree with Don, most Farang struggle with managing Thais and I have heard many stories of Farang causing mass walkouts of Thai staff due to their management style. I can imagine maintaining a chain of restaurants to high farang standard must be quite a challenge,

Wine connection Bangtao is a good spot in my opinion, always enjoy it.

[stevenl]

I always divided the tips equally with the Thai staff. Even though they dropped and broke a loke of plates and issued many incorrect orders. To them the tips was like winning the lottery. It had nothing to do with the quality of the service. There are so many jobs in Phuket always open that if you push a staff member to do their work and take care of the customers they go down the road to a beer bar and work. Hard to keep people at work.

Regarding quality of food, this is a product of absentee management and nothing can be done about this. When the cat is away the mouse will play. However, when complaining you should write a note to Michael, leave it with the manager. Put your E-mail on the complaint and I think Michael will fix the problem. He is a results oriented person and am sure he wants things to be made right. If you don't complain to him then it is a waste of time.

I had 18 different farang employees in Phuket and never one of them could get the Thai staff to listen to them. They can't read, write or speak Thai so they are worthless working supervising Thai staff. They will listen to the owner but not another farang. Some of these farangs caused my entire kitchen staff to leave 2 times.

I agree with Don, most Farang struggle with managing Thais and I have heard many stories of Farang causing mass walkouts of Thai staff due to their management style. I can imagine maintaining a chain of restaurants to high farang standard must be quite a challenge,

Wine connection Bangtao is a good spot in my opinion, always enjoy it.

If you can't manage a chain, then don't. But don't blame the Thai staff for that, ultimately it is the owner's responsibility to have expanded too far, to a point where he can't control anymore.

[grumpyoldman]

StevenI usually I am on the same page with you but with the last point, I don't think you have the experience to come to that conclusion.

Please tell us, how many outlets of what you do, do you handle.

"If you can't manage a chain, then don't." Horseshit, and would be happy to talk to you in person about that one.

Making sure you are putting competent personnel in place to properly manage the segments of the operation, that comes down to superior management of a chain.

1989 I went to work for a guy named Joe Columbo in Southern California. At that time he had about ten of these specialty wine and food markets. 5 years later 30 of them. Customers used to mention product quality decrease during expansion.

Sure, but the company will catch up regarding product production/supply/import to support. Perishable products right? Isn't like having extra dive gear for extra customers, understand? Staffing in Thailand and especially Phuket? Bit of a nightmare, really.

BTW-that company I worked for in 89 now has about 1000 stores in N. America.

[DonaldBattles]

Precisely what I did. I expanded beyond my control. As mentioned after about 4 months the staff start learning how to bypass the systems like the POS and the stealing starts. Once you get hot on their tails they bail out. If you had a Thai witnessing another Thai stealing they would never sign a police report so staff would never report stealing. The stealing got so bad that I started closing all operations where I could not be there 100% of the time. In Phuket I finally put up a big gate and chain link fence with lock so that goods could not be taken out the back door. Purchased a staff locker for their purses and telephones. Then They would go to the locker take their phones out to the toilet and fill it talking until I came and flushed them out. If you think you can outsmart these people unless you have a one on one situation you are fooling yourself. Much of this experience is in my book "Merchant Of The Orient, an Entrepreneur's Journey In Life".

[DonaldBattles]

Don't have Michaels address in the computer. But you can contact Paul the best employee he has in Phuket for many years at: email removed

Paul can give you has address or pass the message along to Michael. Both of these people are good men.

Edited September 9, 2013 by LivinginKata
no emails please

[AyG]

You can't be in 10 places at one time.

Based upon a sign in the Mega Bang-na branch it's now more than 40 places he needs to be at one time. Frankly, I'm not surprised that rapid expansion has caused some quality problems. (However, with the entry into the market of new competition such as Wine Express, I can understand why they're trying to grab territory.) That said, the food I had for lunch yesterday was actually rather good (couscous with merguez, lamb kebab, chicken and vegetables). (The house wine, however, was quite another thing.)

My main gripe with them is that they no longer accept cash on delivery for orders of crates of wine. Very short-sighted, given the problems that arise trying to use local debit cards on the Internet in Thailand. They've already lost two orders from me because of the problems with paying.

[stevenl]

<snip>

"If you can't manage a chain, then don't." Horseshit, and would be happy to talk to you in person about that one.

Making sure you are putting competent personnel in place to properly manage the segments of the operation, that comes down to superior management of a chain. <snip>

I think we are on the same page here. Don is blaming incompetent staff (Thai and farang) for problems he experienced and problems WC experiences according to the OP and some posters here.

What you're saying is, or at least what you seem to be saying, if you have competent staff you can manage a company this way.

And yes, I agree with that.

Don seemed to have a problem with staff, he was not happy when he gave responsibility. My point is, if that is the case you don't have good staff, or if you think staff that can work to your standards is not available, then don't run a company that way and stay smaller.

In his post # 22 he seems to agree with me BTW. If you want to stay in total control and oversee everything yourself you can not expend to many locations, if you're willing to give control to others you can.

BTW, I'm not comfortable discussing others here on the forum, want to do that better do that over a beer. A general discussion here would be a different matter.

Edited September 9, 2013 by stevenl

[grumpyoldman]

<snip>

"If you can't manage a chain, then don't." Horseshit, and would be happy to talk to you in person about that one.

Making sure you are putting competent personnel in place to properly manage the segments of the operation, that comes down to superior management of a chain. <snip>

I think we are on the same page here. Don is blaming incompetent staff (Thai and farang) for problems he experienced and problems WC experiences according to the OP and some posters here.

What you're saying is, or at least what you seem to be saying, if you have competent staff you can manage a company this way.

And yes, I agree with that.

Don seemed to have a problem with staff, he was not happy when he gave responsibility. My point is, if that is the case you don't have good staff, or if you think staff that can work to your standards is not available, then don't run a company that way and stay smaller.

In his post # 22 he seems to agree with me BTW. If you want to stay in total control and oversee everything yourself you can not expend to many locations, if you're willing to give control to others you can.

BTW, I'm not comfortable discussing others here on the forum, want to do that better do that over a beer. A general discussion here would be a different matter.

Agreed, and sounds good.

[eezergood]

<snip>

"If you can't manage a chain, then don't." Horseshit, and would be happy to talk to you in person about that one.

Making sure you are putting competent personnel in place to properly manage the segments of the operation, that comes down to superior management of a chain. <snip>

I think we are on the same page here. Don is blaming incompetent staff (Thai and farang) for problems he experienced and problems WC experiences according to the OP and some posters here.

What you're saying is, or at least what you seem to be saying, if you have competent staff you can manage a company this way.

And yes, I agree with that.

Don seemed to have a problem with staff, he was not happy when he gave responsibility. My point is, if that is the case you don't have good staff, or if you think staff that can work to your standards is not available, then don't run a company that way and stay smaller.

In his post # 22 he seems to agree with me BTW. If you want to stay in total control and oversee everything yourself you can not expend to many locations, if you're willing to give control to others you can.

BTW, I'm not comfortable discussing others here on the forum, want to do that better do that over a beer. A general discussion here would be a different matter.

Agreed! with a small caveat!

If you want to grow/expand you must accept things will NEVER be 100% the way you want! Damage limitation is the key

[littleboylost]

Grumpyoldman:

Trader Joes!!!! Best specialty food and wine store ever!

Still pick up odds and ends from there when I am in LA.

[DonaldBattles]

If mediocrity and low quality is acceptable you can get all you need here. I worked on the Apollo Program from it's beginning to the last mission. Could we get the moon with this attitude. If you don't have the balls to do your job right and don't care about customers then stay out of business. I think farangs are happier if they don't get into business in Thailand to pay for the wife and her family. I paid for many staff member to go to high school and college to give them an opportunity in life. They had no obligation to return to work for me when finished but had to work part time while going to school. However, an education gives you the tools to make a good living if you are willing to use them. I might add that none of them used their education to get better jobs other than knowing English better and marrying a farang.

A farang husband or boyfriend is a golden rice bowl that is never empty and a wide screen TV that always works.

In the USA I had a lot of low class stealing, doped up semi-professional employes so these problems are not unique to Thailand. I changed my pay day until each Wed. from Friday. If I paid them on Friday they got drunk all weekend and would not come to work on Monday. More of this information in Merchant of the Orient.

I always thought that in business if you are not growing you are dying. And like most people discover when they follow this philosophy you continue to grow until you kill yourself because you can manage the situation. Asia is a different world and the business rules in the west do not apply to here.

I won't bore you anymore with my philosophy of operating a business in Thailand. Better for you to enjoy your self and stay out of business here. Remember what Kipling said!

[BookMan]

Remember what Kipling said!

"The silliest woman can manage a clever man; but it needs a very clever woman to manage a fool"?