So you want to open a new restaurant in Pattaya? You maybe have already a restaurant in Bangkok and want to try taking a piece of Pattaya’s success!
Let me tell you, Pattaya is not Bangkok, and it is not Europe. Most farang restaurant owners are so wrong about hiring their staff, that I have to make this article to explain them.
Most of my friends who have business here are saying the same thing: “Thai staff are lazy, they are not reliable, they are the worse…”. But maybe you are the worse boss too? You are offering 11,000 baht for starting. You think that it is a lot, because waitress/pool boys and bell boys in hotels are paid 9000 baht.
Salaries are taboo, and the real salary in big companies like Pizza Company or MK are not publicly said.
Take a pool boy or a bell boy in a hotel, that’s the lowest salary you can find. They are making 9000 baht per month. But they have service charge. This is minimum 1000 baht extra, average 1500 baht (up to 3000 in hi-season).
So our pool boy already make 10500. But this is not finish, hotels are doing 3 meals for free every day. That’s a saving of 40×3=120 baht/ day = 3300 baht saved.
We are now at 13500 but it is not finished. Hotels are giving a room for free or at least priced 50% off the price. They are saving 1500 baht more.
We are at 15000 baht. But it is not finished, they also have tips, at least 50 bath / day, that’s 1500 more!
We are now at 16500 baht of buying power. At the end of the year they usually have a month of salary in extra. They also have a good health care that is cheap but very interesting because the big groups have great deals on healthcare.
So you are offering 11,000 with 1000 more for food, no accommodation and you think that you are a best choice than McDonald, KFC, Pizza Company any of the good Hotels, or MK? What is happening is that there are a lot of good hard working people in Pattaya, but they do not want you, because you are too cheap. Who is going to pay the loans, the credit cards if they have to start at 11,000 in your small unknown farang company?
Everyone who is working in a big group is making 15,000 after 2-3 month of work, and after a years most reach 20,000 otherwise how all these Thai would have credit cards, cars and expensive motorbikes? The salaries are low because this avoid paying too much taxes, but the extras compensate. Lot of OT (extra hours) paid close to 100 baht / hour, lot of advantages that farang do not think about.
So if you want to setup a business in Pattaya, be ready to pay to have quality staff, otherwise, you will be like my friends complaining about how Thais are bad at work, when actually they have no qualified staff at all. You get the worse because you pay the worse, that’s the reality, the big franchise do not have people late, and their staff are working hard you can see when the restaurants are full, people are working +10 hours with 30 min pause sometime.
One way or another, 15,000 is the bare minimum to have qualified staff in Pattaya, and do not think that you come here like Rocco and your best pizza, and Thai will care about you accepting to lose 4000 baht / month to have the privilege to learn the difference between 2 types of Mozzarella.
You propose them 11,000, they answer you
maybe,
and actually you have insulted them. Insulted their qualification, their experience and their intelligence. They will go elsewhere and find an excuse to avoid making you losing the face. They are not going to tell you that you are an asshole, they are Thai!
The ones who will accept your price are stupid young people who will go Walking Street at night and stop coming when meeting a farang who will pay them the same doing nothing in the room. And after we will have this conversation: “Thai are not good at work, they are not reliable”.
Really? How much do you pay? Less than 15,000, no one can make it with that in Pattaya. Thais are not the problem, it is the arrogance and the colonialist mentality. Pay the people the price they deserve, value their experience and qualifications, and you will have a great hard working team!
