THIS IS LIFE

Look out Martha Stewart

Society figures turned culinary innovators Parnisra Thiengtham and Boonyapa Tangkarawakul talk about realising their potential

KANOKPORN CHANASONKGRAM

They were close cousins, who went to the same high school in the US when they were teens. Then Parnisra Thiengtham (Pym) crossed the Atlantic for schooling in England, where she got a bachelor's degree in commercial art, followed by a MBA.

Boonyapa Tangkarawakul (Jub Jang), on the other hand, studied accounting at an American university, and returned to Thailand. She also has an MBA from Chulalongkorn University.

With their family background and overseas education, they both seem to have a pretty good life. Now approaching their 40s, Boonyapa is a happy housewife with three kids while Parnisra is an outgoing single girl who helps out with her family's new hotel business and enjoys water skiing at weekends in Hua Hin.

The two, however, wanted to enrich their lives by setting up their own company. Since Parnisra also picked up Cordon Bleu cooking during her studies in England, they decided to go into the food business. But opening a restaurant proved impossible. Instead, last November they opened Taste2Go, a dinner delivery service. The small business with a staff of 12 seems to have got off to a good start, with a steadily increasing number of customers who desire more than mundane khao kaeng (rice and curry) and order their dinner boxes, which provide a nice meal for two people.

Devoted to their brainchild, the cousins are now so busy that they don't have time for socialising. Parnisra spends more time shopping at supermarkets, which is an early morning task, to get fresh ingredients for Taste2Go's daily orders. Likewise, Boonyapa has had to stop her regular trips to Siam Paragon for lunching and chitchatting with friends.

Why did you start up this business?

PARNISRA: I like to cook for other people and seeing them enjoying my food makes me very happy. Perhaps it runs in the blood because my grandmother, my mother and my aunties all have a passion for cooking.

Home cooking isn't easy though, especially for those leading hectic lives who tend to eat out and consume more fast food. That's why there's still a gap in the catering business for quality home-made cooking served to your door.

But we didn't want to do traditional pinto (food in old fashioned meal containers) and I asked myself why does it have to be boring Thai food every day? Why not deliver more variety with Thai, Thai-mix (Thai food made with Western ingredients), Asian and international dishes to jazz up dinnertime.

BOONYAPA: At first I was confused about what she was talking about, then I recognised that it's something new, something that has never been done before, and variety is the selling point of our company.

What else makes it different from other home delivery services?

PARNISRA: Besides variety, we use fresh and quality ingredients sourced from leading supermarkets and the food is prepared in hygienic conditions by our chefs. We emphasise healthy yet tasty dishes because we want our customers to have the same quality of food that we ourselves eat at home.

BOONYAPA: Customers can be assured that the food is good for everyone in the family, including kids.

PARNISRA: Surprises also make it different. For instance, our beef bugolgi had one customer phoning us that she thought she was dining in a Korean restaurant at the Pathumwan Princess Hotel.

Honestly, how would you appraise Pym's cooking?

BOONYAPA: I was very surprised at how good she is at cooking. She also has a good sense of what ingredients go well together for a recipe and what combination of dishes would make a delightful dinner. So, our dinner boxes feature four tempting items that achieve a balance in terms of nutrition and taste. Pym is also very creative with cooking and this St Valentine's Day she plans to serve up pink mashed potato, with the pastel pink colour coming from beetroot.

Does Jub Jang have the same culinary flair?

PARNISRA: At first I thought that a housewife like her would be a good cook, but I found out that she's clueless in the kitchen. Instead of helping me out, she's a troublemaker! So that's why you will always see me busy in the kitchen while Jub Jang is sitting in front of the computer. But she's good at finding new customers, especially from her network of housewives.

BOONYAPA: My main job is to set standards in products and operations as well as quality control. Besides good products, a new business needs good systems and operations to be successful - this is something I learned from my first venture in importing Mrs Fields cookies. And we have to continuously improve our computer system and operations to effectively service the increasing number of customers.

Have you had any complaints so far?

PARNISRA: No, not yet. But we would gladly welcome any kind of feedback to help us further improve the food and service. We did, however make one mistake during the first two weeks of opening, when our staff sent out glass noodles that weren't properly cooked. We couldn't sleep at all that night and in the morning we sent out letters to apologise for what had happened. We took responsibility by offering dinner boxes free of charge. Thereafter we set up standard procedures in the kitchen to prevent future problems

What sort of problems are difficult to tackle?

PARNISRA: Our chefs have their own ideas and sometimes they may not keep to the standards for each dish. It's good to be creative though, and we listen to them first before advising on what would be best to meet our standards. Sometimes it ends with a compromise, but in all cases we have a solution that works best for our customers.

Do you have disagreements?

PARNISRA: We're all grown up and we help each other make a living. It's okay to get into arguments that will make our business grow. But we don't fight over nonsense.

We also believe that two is enough as business partners. With a third party, he or she would take sides. We buy two of everything so the company assets can be easily divided if, in the future, either one of us wants to quit.

BOONYAPA: Yes, two is enough for our staff too. They sometimes have a headache because Pym wants them to do this while I tell them to do that. So it would be worse with three or more bosses walking around, pointing their fingers.

After two months, you're busying yourselves with more than just dinner boxes.

PARNISRA: After starting up the business, we realised that our kitchen had the capacity to do lunch boxes, and we have recently introduced Party2Go. We're always searching for opportunities to expand the business. For example, when we started in November it was nearing the festive season, so we did Christmas and New Year hampers. Out of the blue, we had orders for 400 to 500 hampers - it was the most exhausting New Year we ever had, and instead of partying with friends we were packing hamper after hamper till late at night.

BOONYAPA: Both of us nearly collapsed under the Christmas hampers but we laughed at it when the work was done. It provided us with good experience and taught us not to overlook details, like tightly tying bows to hampers.

In one case, the bow fell off and the customer called us to go to her house and fix it. This may seem like a trivial matter, but since the hampers cost two to three thousand baht she expected them to be perfect. What we learned is that we need to set a standard procedure in tying bows as well as in everything that we do.

Why do a 'Khun Noo' and a 'Khun Nai' like you two have to do all this labour?

PARNISRA: Our friends also ask why we have to load ourselves with all the hard work?

First, along with the fatigue, it's fun to be busy and it's better than wasting time on shopping and socialising. We have also proven ourselves to our parents that we can accomplish whatever we set our heart on doing.

BOONYAPA: It's to make good use of our time, our potential and our creativity. We're thinking of introducing more services, to reap more experience, and one day we might end up being Thailand's answer to Martha Stewart.

But why does a happy housewife like me have to work? Because of life's uncertainties, you have to be able to stand on your own two feet by engaging in something that might not be a big business, but that is something that you love doing.

For more information, call 02-399-4268 or visit http://www.taste2go.com

Bangkok Post
Friday February 02, 2007