Are you amazed at the number of dessert cafes there?
I have a sweet tooth. One of my favorite activity in Bangkok is to try out the different dessert cafes. The sheer number and varieties of desserts they have beat Singapore hands down.
And when you talk about desserts, it's really only desserts.
Swenson sells only ice cream. No main course, soup, salad or appetizer. Dessert shops selling only cakes, desserts and drinks. Crepe shops selling only crepe.
I once counted a shopping mall with at least 17 dessert cafes. It would takes me at least one year to just try one dessert a day to finish all of them. And I'm just talking about the shopping malls. Add in the little cafes found along the streets and the sois and I'm sure there's more.
In Singapore, if you want to have a slice of cheesecake in a shopping mall with sit down area, your choices would be TCC, Starbucks, Coffee Beans and Tea Leaf. Or you can pay a little bit more to go to a hotel's cafe. If you want those independent small artisanal cake shop, be prepared to go some out of the way places. You'll never find them at shopping malls.
The Thais also seem to love eating sweet things. They can eat dessert at any time of the day. Boys and girls. Man and woman. Grandpa and grandma. I saw two elderly man sharing a dessert in a cafe. It's so rare to find elderly man going to a dessert cafe in Singapore.
I remember seated at a cafe and the people just kept coming. Across me, there's another cafe with a long queue at 6pm. Isn't it about time for dinner? They do not have a specific time for eating dessert. Using the crowd as a gauge of time at a dessert cafe is indeed misleading.
Now, is that the reason why these cafes can survive by selling only desserts?
Over here, it's very difficult to survive just selling desserts. Some cafes started out selling desserts ended up selling a lot of other food as well. Is our population too small? Are our people not into this kind of culture?
Now back to the cafe I was seated watching the world went by.
Two customers just left the cafe and the staff came over to clear the table. I've always heard and have read that the Thais take their time to do things. They are slower (compared to Singapore's efficiency) and not as hurried like us. Well, this can be a good thing right? But it's not what I experienced. Most of the times, their services are prompt, efficient and attentive.
Anyway, I watched the staff as she was cleaning the table. I'm always amazed at how much effort the Thais took to make sure their tables are cleaned. They do not just clean for the sake of cleaning, they make sure it's really CLEAN. Even the tables at their street hawkers are clean.
Apart from wiping the top of the glass table, she even wiped the underneath of the glass table.
Now, compare this to Singapore. I'll be lucky if I do not have to use my own wet tissue to give the table an extreme makeover.
And one night, I was at Siam Paragon when it was about to close. The staff at the restaurants were busy preparing to close the shops. They were all wiping the shelves, pillar, chairs, railings, tables, utensils and display racks.
If you are in the F & B business, when was the last time you wipe the top of your shelf?