In the past we have run successful promotions aimed at getting the girls in early. They work, insofar as the girls turn up but as they still don’t find any action they soon get bored with it and revert to turning up later. To combat this we are launching a new Friday promotion this week aimed at both sides of the problem.

For the girls we will be offering free drinks (yes free) between 4pm and 9 pm on Friday nights. This offer is for unaccompanied girls sitting at either of the two bars.

For the guys we are offering Bar Fines between these times.

Bar Fines may not sound like much of a promotion but the BIG DIFFERENCE is that WE will pay YOU the bar fine. If you hook up with a freelancer in the Beer Garden between 4 pm and 9 pm on Friday nights, WE will pay YOU a 200 baht bar fine. The 200 baht will be credited to your bill, so that’s 3 or 4 extra beers for free.

To accommodate this we have appointed Ae as Mamasan. If you want to bar fine a girl, just ask your server and she will bring over Mamasan Ae to sort things out for you. Ae will add the 200 baht credit to your bill.

What happens after WE pay YOUR bar fine is as always in Pattaya between you and the girl. We expect you to leave with her but after that you’ll need to figure out what happens, yourself.

If you do not use the full 200 baht credit, we will not pay it back in cash. You need to spend it or lose it. You can use it on any of our food or drink products.

It has certainly been a very low, “Low Season” this year and Pattaya has been quieter than usual. I am happy to say though, that the Beer Garden has been doing OK. We are always working to improve our service and that’s been the main thrust of activity over the past few months.

I’ve done a few management training sessions for our Thai managers, which is a lot of fun. I used to train managers back in Farang land so it is fascinating to compare the difference. It can be a little frustrating getting Thais to show initiative. Not that they don’t have any, just that culturally, questioning the boss or suggesting something could be done better is not usually acceptable.

One improvement we have made is to the lighting on the balcony tables. It’s always been pretty dim out there but when we increased the strength of the light some customers complained that it ruined the view and the atmosphere. Each table now has it’s own portable lamp that works with rechargeable batteries. The lamp has 3 dimmer levels or you can turn it off so everybody can now set the light level to suit themselves.

I’d like to correct some wrong information I have seen posted on Pattaya message boards.

I’ve seen a few people commenting that they liked The Pattaya Beer Garden but the food service is slow. While it is true that we were very slow getting food out last Christmas, that is not the case anymore. I often run a stop watch on food orders and most are now served within 10 - 15 minutes. We have not had a 30 minute delay since February. I wrote about this problem in earlier blogs if you are interested in how we fixed it but enough for now to say you should find the service very quick these days. Even when we are full there are no appreciable delays.

The second wrong comment I see is about the number of freelancers at The PBG. The numbers have been improving monthly to the point now there are often more girls than guys in the bar after 8 pm. It is true that freelancers are sparse during the day time and early evening. Not because they don’t want to come but because when they do, there are no guys interested. Our daytime customers are mainly in for a drink or a meal and a chat with friends. No customers for the girls means they don’t bother coming in. It’s VERY different from Bangkok in this regard.

The promotions we do for the girls on Tuesday and Friday were partly intended to get the girls in earlier. It does bring in quite a few from 7pm but its biggest impact has been to improve the number of late night girls. (Go figure). Anyway it has been a big success and will continue for the foreseeable future. I’m thinking of adding a slightly different but similar promotion on Wednesdays and Thursdays from next month. If I do I’ll be writing about it in the blog.

Last Friday I took the trusty video camera down to the PBG and filmed some of the girls just to prove my point. It was shot mainly between 7 pm and 10 pm. As you can see, lots of girls around and although I can’t guarantee how many will be in the bar at any particular time (that’s why they are called “freelancers”) you can generally be pretty sure there will be plenty around between 8 pm and Midnight, especially on Tuesdays and Fridays when we run the promotion.

Nevertheless I think the girls and guys that turned up all had plenty of fun and actually for me it was very gratifying to see lots of the girls hook up with lots of guys. It seemed like the proceedings kind of loosened up the guys too, so lots of happy liaisons were occurring. Great to see guys.

The promotion is also working well bringing in girls on other days of the week to get tickets. As a lot of ticket holders did not turn up yesterday I’ll be getting the staff to remind the girls they have to be here next Friday at 7 pm to win. I hope to see lots of you during the week but particularly at 7 pm next Friday.

I made a big effort to get some photos this time so without further ado, here they are.

Boss Ann and Night Manager Surpanee prepare to do the draw.

When nobody claimed the prize from the first few draws a backward draw was done to attract better luck

When that didn’t work a male customer was roped into pulling a number followed by a shriek of success from the winner, here frantically trying to find her winning ticket.

The man who pulled the lucky number was suitably rewarded by the winner.

The cash is handed over.

We did a booby prize draw an hour later of 1,000 baht and this is the second winner.

San Miquel Lite promotion girls were also present and giving away shirts and trinklets to SML drinkers.

Yep, even a few farang women were in attendance. They were not eliglible for the major prize but did pick up some San Miquel trinkets.

Our latest promotion for the girls is that when they buy a drink for themselves while waiting for Prince Charming to arrive, they receive a numbered ticket which puts them in a draw to win 5,000 baht each week. The draw takes place at 7 pm every Friday and to win they must be present.

We began the promotion last week and had the first draw last Friday. From about 6:30 pm the girls started to roll in and by 7 pm there were well over 100 freelancers in the place. This one really seems to have captured their imagination and I suspect numbers will grow over the following weeks.

I am writing about this here because we need lots of guys around at the time of the draw for the girls to take advantage of. While freelancer numbers are growing there are nowhere near 100 in the bar at any one time, EXCEPT on Friday evening at 7 pm. So come on guys, don’t be shy, check out the largest collection of Freelancers in one place at one time every Friday at 7 pm at The Pattaya Beer Garden.

Friday 1st May 2009 The Pattaya Beer Garden turns 1 year old and we are celebrating by giving away 100,000 baht worth of free beer.

The taps open and the free beer starts flowing at 4 pm. Your choice of Heineken draught or Tiger draught. We won’t stop pouring till 2am or we use up the full 100,000 baht worth.

Thanks to everyone who has supported the Beer Garden over the past 12 months and made it more successful than we ever dreamed. This is our way of giving a birthday gift to past and future customers.

So come along on Friday 1 May and enjoy a bevy on us.

No terms, no conditions, just free beer as long as it lasts.

We are approaching our 1st year of operation and with that experience behind us looking at ways we can improve the services The Pattaya Beer Garden offers.

Probably the biggest problem I could see was that the main bar was so large that it was a little hard for people trying to meet the girl of her dreams. I wrote in February about the smaller, more intimate bar we were adding specially for those looking to meet someone. Well it has been operational for about a month and seems to be fulfilling its function. Freelancer numbers are up and most are choosing to sit at the small bar. Our afternoon promotion is having a slow but sure effect and the number of girls about in the afternoon is on the increase. We could still use much more and so the promotion will continue through April and probably May as well.

The new bar in operation.

No change to the bar would be complete without a picture of a crazy Thai workman. In this fine example, when the ladder was not high enough to reach the roof the simple and obvious solution is to tie two ladders together.

The tables around the inside of the bar annoyed me. The problem with them was that they were normal height tables so people sitting at the sort of disappeared and go a free view of the bums of people sitting at the nearby bar. (Sometimes not such a bad thing). We have now replaced all the inside tables near the bar with new models that are at standard bar height and they have comfy high backed chairs as well. We have also added fans above this internal seating as it could get quite hot sitting there.

These tables all have a near by power point as well and so make an excellent workplace for those who want to use the free wifi.

The final improvement finished last month was to the toilets. I made the classic mistake when we built the bar of letting the builders choose the toilets. Of course they chose cheap Thai made ones that are too small for many Farang bums and with a plastic mechanism so cheap it would break if you looked at it for too long. Having kept out maintenance man fully employed for the past year fixing them I finally bit the bullet and threw out the four units we had and purchased five brand new American made Farang friendly appliances. The fifth one will eventually be installed in the Ladies where we only have two stalls at the moment. ( a bit of a bottle neck at times).

It’s only a toilet but it is Farang friendly.

Having got all that out of the way we are no revisiting the menu. No drastic changes are planned but we will drop a few items that do not sell so well and add a few new things. I asked our Executive Chef about a Sausage based meal to add to our comfort food menu and she blew me away by preparing a gourmet delight Sausage and Mash spectacular. With the special sauce she adds it is actually one of my favorite meals now and even a few Thai’s who tried it out really loved it. It should be on the menu in a few days.

VEGETARIANS TAKE NOTE:
I’ve had a few vegies approach me in the last month asking if we could add some vegie food. We do a mixed vegetable Thai dish as well as Fried Rice with vegetables but we are now looking to add some Tofu dishes as well. As I am not a vegetarian any feedback from the Vegies out there as to what you would like to see on our menu would be welcome.

We get a lot of good comments on our steaks. This surprised me a little as I made a decision way back at the start that we would have to use local beef as the imported steaks would lift the price beyond the bracket we wanted to be in. As many of you will know local Thai beef does not make for great steaks but it seemed an unavoidable compromise.

While recently going through the prices of different suppliers with the Executive Chef we were looking at steak and she pointed out to me where our steaks come from and how much they cost. I was more than a little taken back when I realized she has been buying and serving imported New Zealand steak the whole time. No wonder they taste so good.

Although our profit margin is a bit low on these steaks I am pleasantly surprised that we can do them for the price we do. It must be the cheapest imported steak in Pattaya. We will continue serving these at the same price and I will stop telling everyone they are local beef.

In light of the world wide credit crunch and the tough economic situation we will not be raising any of our prices in the foreseeable future. Thailand is actually experiencing quite high inflation at the moment and our cost of goods have gone up around 10 percent in the past year. The volume that we are doing is much greater than I originally planned for though and good news about that, is that it will allow us to absorb the price increases and not pass them on to our customers.

See you in the Beer Garden.
Cheers

Pete

Anyway I don’t think too many people will care about the view from my balcony but I will be taking the phone into the Beer Garden later today and I’ll add some clips from there. You can check out a group I created on the QIK website where any new clips will be added. The address is QIK Pattaya Group

If the group gets a few views I’ll keep on adding clips from the Beer Garden and from around Pattaya.

The girls have stopped coming because they are not finding any guys interested in them. It may be that there is too much else to do in Pattaya during the day but I don’t think so. I think it is more a matter of getting to a critical mass of both girls and guys in the afternoon. So to grease the process we will be running a special promotion for the girls for the next 6 weeks or so.

We started LAST week and are already getting a good response. I expect it to increase rapidly over the next few weeks and the result should be lots of girls looking between 2 pm and 8 pm. After 8 pm we are already getting a good number of girls in.

The promotion is only for the girls so there is no direct benefit to you other than there should be a lot more girls in the bar at these times and they will stay longer. However I do need your help.

We can get the girls in and encourage them to stay but they will only keep coming back if they find some willing punters. So guys come on in and check out the talent. Even if you don’t want to drink or eat, you are welcome to cruise through and see what takes your fancy. Remember . . . . no barfine . . . . .. no lady drinks.

Another comment I have had which I think is relevant is that the big bar is too big to easily make contact with the girl you like the look of. To help with this we are adding a new smaller bar right by the entrance. We will encourage the girls to hang out there and it should make it much easier to make contact with them for the guys that want to. People chilling out can still use the big bar where you won’t be to close to anyone else. Construction on the new started last week and should be completed this week.

Finally we have appointed a customer liaison person. Her name is Nok and she will be working from 2 pm to 10 pm. She is not a mamasan as such but she is there to ease the whole process. She speaks excellent English and can help if you have language problems. It is not her job to find guys for the girls but if you see someone you like and would like Nok to ask her to sit with you, she will be happy to oblige. If you are showing a green (looking) coaster and a girl expresses interest in you to Nok then she will mention it to you. No obligation of course.

So over to you guys. I am giving it my absolute best shot over the next six weeks. Does Pattaya need an afternoon freelancer hangout? If you think so then drop by and lets get this off the ground properly.

Pete

To make room for the new bar, part of the old cocktail bar has to go!

Watching a guy take a sledge hammer to part of the Pattaya Beer Garden is a little uncomfortable.

More destruction.

The new bar is laid out.

Starting to take shape

.

It seems that everyone decided to view the midnight fireworks from the Pattaya Beer Garden. By 9 pm we were full and people started using the Somtum station and the washing up station as standing bars. They just kept on coming and by 10 o’clock I decided we could not handle any more people, so I put up a sign saying the Beer Garden is full. That made not one bit of difference as people ignored it and continued to pour in.

My next move was to put the sign right in the middle of the entranceway so it could not be ignored. Forget it! People just knocked it over as they continued to flood in. Finally, about 10:30 I closed the gate and stood there like a policeman saying you can’t come in. Some people got quite upset as they had obviously planned there evening but as I tried to explain it was getting to a point where I felt it would be dangerous to let anyone else in.

I took quite a bit of abuse at the door that night but as you can imagine, I felt somewhat vindicated by subsequent events at the Santika nightclub in Bangkok. By midnight Santika was overly full and when a tragic fire broke out just after midnight 60 people could not escape and were killed. We could have squeezed more people in and no doubt made more money but I think we did the right thing by putting safety first. I do apologize to anyone who planned to come that night and could not get in.

Following New Years week things at last settled down and for really the first time since we opened customer numbers have dropped back a bit. Strangely I am actually pleased with this as the numbers are now totally manageable and I think we have been coping much better and providing a better customer experience. In the last week I don’t think any meal has taken more than twenty minutes to be delivered and we have been averaging around 10 minutes.

There have been two recent comments on the blog which I’d like to highlight and answer.

Firstly the Pattaya Ghost writes

“Hi Pete, as you know, I’ve been a fan, but I’ve decided, after two recent visits (one in the daytime Jan. 1) where I’ve had to wait 40 minutes or more for our food I’m not coming back until the service is faster. I like the place, the view and the food is generally good and a good value, but none of that offsets the perpetual delays. I’ve given it lots of chances and the situation simply doesn’t improve.

I’ll be watching here to see when you say the probelm is fixed and I’ll give it one last try.”

Secondly from Cameron McCown

“I had been waiting patiently to get to Pattaya since the start of this web page. I have enjoyed reading your weekly (at first) then monthly entries on this amazing restaurant. After more that 20 years in the business (stateside) it was more than interesting to read about your adventure. As a former restuarantuer I was drooling at the opportunity your had created there. What a dream come true for anyone with the moxy to pull it off. Congrats by the way.
I was in Pattaya from Nov 25th through Dec 10th of this last year and made it to PBG more than a few times. Yes I saw your growing pains first hand. My third time around I sat at the end of the bar where I could get a better look at the kitchen area. I do not remember the date but that night the restaurant was rockin’. It might have been the King’s Birthday I just cannot recall to be 100% sure.

You are correct about the timing of hardly anyone there when we arrived and within 30 minutes of our arrival the place was pretty much full or at least reaching that point. Basically you need crowd control on busy or potentially busy nights.

I remember my first time walking in. It was for breakfast and was able to just seat myself. I was a bit surprised but then looking around it was a pretty calm morning and I remember reading that breakfasts are not that busy anyway. This may work during the slow times but I would recomend having some sort of seating control during your busy times. Slow down the rate of seatings by directing folks to your bar area. Seat folks in a timely rational manner. Rope off the seating area and have your greeters or servers seat the guests evenly throughout the restaurant. This serves 2 perposes. It keeps your servers from getting slammed. And keeps the ticket machin from rolling off it’s rollers in the kitchen.

On a night like that there will be little you can do other than stem the tide. It will slow down the tickets coming into the kitchen maybe just enough so that your expeditor can direct the mayhem that is coming your way. It will also up your bar business quite nicely.

Bottom line is you are in a choice location with a great view and a huge menu. Seat your patrons as your kitchen can handle them and your customers will be happier in the end. Sounds seasier said than done and it truly is. Just stem the flow and keep all the tickets from arriving at the same time. That is the goal. “

I quoted Cameron because he neatly summed up the issue. I don’t think we will ever do seating control because for me it would ruin the casual nature of the bar and anyway quite a few people like to sit at the tables just to drink. As I said above we have settled into far more manageable numbers, and have been coping rather well. We are still mostly full in the evening but the flow seems much better without the huge rush around 7 pm. Maybe it has sort of self regulated itself. Thanks for your well thought out post Cameron. Anyone else have a comment on Cameron’s idea.

This brings me to the Pattaya Ghost. I do appreciate your point of view Ghost. I’d say the problem is fixed NOW but I can’t guarantee it. We really are coping just fine at the moments with very acceptable wait times but if 50 or 100 diners arrive all at once as they have in the past we will struggle again. I’d say you are 90% safe to assume service will be quick and that’s about the best I can do. Remember though that if it’s going to take more than twenty minutes we will warn you BEFORE you order.

Well as you can imagine from all the above the staff really worked bloody hard over the busy Christmas period. Everybody worked right through the two week period without a day off and they really did an amazing job. As they all missed out on a Christmas or New Years party we threw a special celebration just for them on 6 January. Everybody received a Christmas Bonus present by pulling a number out of a hat and the gifts ranged from stuffed toys to rice cookers and even a TV. A good night was had by all and I must say I think we have put together a really great group.

With the madness of the holiday season I had no time to take any photos but I’ll include a few here from the staff party.

Next week a new bar in the beer garden and a special promotion for freelancers.

Pete

It’s the start of a New Year which brings the usual New Year resolutions and promises to do things better and quicker and more efficiently. I suffer the same afflictions and hope to be a better person and run a better business in 2009. I also hope to keep this blog running and update it a little more frequently.

I have decided to stop posting the entries here on the various Pattaya message boards. They have been a great help in getting the Pattaya Beer Garden noticed and have led to some very nice compliments mixed in with the occasional brickbat. I must say the owners of the various forums have been very helpful in allowing me to use their bandwidth for a bit of self promotion. So thank you one and all for putting up with my ramblings. I will still be reading the various forums and putting in the occasional post or answering any questions the members may have about the PBG.

By concentrating on the blog alone I hope to be able to post here more frequently as I won’t need to consider a wider audience. This blog gets a surprisingly large number of hits so I guess some people find it interesting. One of my primary reasons for starting this blog was to document the process of getting the PBG up and running for my own benefit as well as anyone else interested in starting a business in Pattaya.

I have tended to concentrate on the problems we have rather than the successes. That’s because the problems are always more interesting and the information more useful. If I posted every month that things were great, business was great and all our customers were really happy, it would be deadly dull. Judging by the comments here and on the forums I think that is largely the case. We get so many positive and enthusiastic comments it would be easy to just concentrate on the positive aspects. Nevertheless any business has its problems and a farang owned business with 55 Thai staff in Pattaya is always going to have its fair share of cock ups. Sometimes the problems are funny, sometimes they piss me off and sometimes they piss off our customers. Whatever the case I will be writing about them here.

So here’s what went wrong at Christmas.

As this was our first Christmas I had no idea what to expect in terms of customer numbers or what they would like from the Beer Garden over the holiday season. I suspected we would be busy and that we would have problems dealing with timely food service. With that in mind and in consultation with out Head Chef I decided to run a Set Menu on 24/25/26 December. An appetizer, choice of Turkey or Lamb dinner and Christmas pudding all for 595 baht was what we came up with.

Come the 24th of December I duly placed a sign at the doorway stating that we were only serving the set menu that night. I then watched for an hour or so as people rolled up to the doorway, read the sign and promptly turned around and disappeared into the night, never to be seen again. By 8 pm we were about 25% full. On previous nights we had been 100% full by that time. Mrs Pete was not happy. Being the driving force behind the Beer Garden, Mrs Pete has never been shy in voicing her opinion and in this case her opinion was clear . . . . . my idea sucked big time.

I was of course calm and collected and said to her, give it time and we will see what happens. Thirty minutes later having dealt with several customers complaining that they did not want the set menu and a still 75% empty bar, I removed the sign and reinstated our normal menu, alongside the set menu. Within 30 minutes we were full and struggling once again to meet demand. How many ways can Mrs Pete say “I told you so”. Well more than I care to remember.

I worked that night on a new Menu for Christmas day. This was our standard menu plus a list of specials that included the Turkey dinner, Lamb dinner and Christmas pudding. I also reduced the price so that ordering the set menu items a la carte now cost 50 baht less. Well we had a huge Christmas Day, our biggest day yet in the Pattaya Beer Garden. Sadly though during the busiest period, 7 pm – 9pm food service was very slow and a few cock ups occurred. If we had stuck with the set menu we would have been able to get all meals out in a timely fashion but the bottom line here is that is not what our customers wanted.

So a valuable lesson learned and I’d like to state right now for the record that we will never, ever offer a set menu again . . . period! This was also a costly mistake in that we had had to order all the Lamb, Turkey and Christmas puddings in advance. We ended up selling only a third of what we ordered and if our staff is now looking a little rounder it because of all the Turkey and Lamb they took home and stuffed themselves with.

Dealing with an international group of customers is always a challenge. Cooking styles and tastes can vary enormously between countries. We had some trouble with this in the early days as the English did not necessarily like the American way of doing things and the Germans had a different view from the Aussis and so on. We have settled on an international style which seems to work for most people. However I was completely taken back when several Americans asked me what Christmas pudding was. I’d just assumed it was an international thing and considered Christmas without Christmas pudding to be sad thing indeed. Well I can tell you now that lots of Americans and Europeans had no idea what Christmas pudding is.

Wikipedia say the following . . . Christmas pudding is the dessert traditionally served on Christmas day. It has its origins in England, and is sometimes known as plum pudding, though this can also refer to other kinds of boiled pudding involving a lot of dried fruit. Christmas pudding is a steamed pudding, heavy with dried fruit and nuts, and usually made with suet. It is very dark in appearance - effectively black - as a result of the dark sugars and black treacle in most recipes, and its long cooking time. The mixture can be moistened with the juice of citrus fruits, brandy and other alcohol.

All the Americans I coerced into trying it actually loved it so I feel I have done my bit for bringing the international community a little closer together. If you have never tried it, do yourself a big favour and grab some next time you have the chance. As I grow older the allure of Christmas has been largely lost but the allure of Christmas pudding lives on.

I have written often here about our struggle to get food out in a timely manner. One commentator on a Pattaya form gave me a bit of stick about this when he got slow service on Christmas day. Your excuses are getting a little old, he said and the problem should have been fixed by now. I can understand his point of view.

Back in May we struggled to do 100 meals a day. When we struck 200 a day in September it was tricky but several changes in the Kitchen and extra staff helped. In November we were almost coping with 400 meals a day and further refinements were added. By Christmas time we were doing well over 500 meals a day and really not coping. Every improvement I made to fix the situation just got swallowed up in extra growth. When Mikey was here he reckoned we would max out at about 500 meals in terms of capacity and I think he was right.

The good news is that the big Christmas rushed ended last Friday and since then we have been coping remarkably well with 400 plus meals a day. It seems easy now that we have peaked out over the Christmas fortnight. I am sure a few more surprises still await me but it’s downhill from here to May and our first full year of operation.

Earlier in December, Venus, Jupiter and the moon combined to smile upon the Pattaya Beer Garden ( and maybe a few other places as well).

New Years eve brought a whole new set of unexpected problems and that will be the topic of my next entry here soon. For now I hope you all had a great Christmas and I wish you all the best for 2009.

Pete