Couple scale up to success in fish patties venture

Over the past five years, the operation has expanded into a venture that posts average monthly sales of Bt100,000 under the couple’s KunAue brand.
“After the economic crisis in 1997, my wife and I sought to find a new business when our customers -restaurants that bought fresh fish from us - reduced their orders,” Thawat-chai said in an interview with The Nation recently.
While looking into their options to cover a shortfall in their revenue from the decline in orders, they continued to distribute fresh fish to their customers until 2012. The turning point came when Rungjit decided to learn how to make fried fish patties, a move that led to them opening their shop at the Thanommit fresh market with the Bt50,000 savings in 2012.
“We opened our shop and developed our own style of fried fish patties under the KunAue brand, which came from our son’s name,” Thawatchai said.
“We put an effort into making our fried fish patties in a different way to the other types you see in the market.”
They backed up the culinary effort with marketing efforts that saw them open a Facebook page to promote the brand. They also have a link to the Thaifoodbiz website, which spread awareness of the brand and helped lead to average weekly sales from the site at Bt3,000.
Together with sales from the shop in the market, the business generates average daily sales of Bt5,000.
From all the channels, the operation is bringing in an average of Bt100,000 a month. Stripping out production and other operational costs, the business generates an average net profit of between Bt20,000 and Bt25,000 a month.
This comes as additional income for the family, who also live on Thawatchai’s earnings from his regulator job, at Bt40,000 a month, he said.
He now has plans to change the packaging design and the new look should come out this year.
Thawatchai’s expects the fresh look will help to improve sales and also expand the customer base in the both the market store and online channels.
“We have sought to learn what our customers want and, in this way, differentiate our products from those of our competitors in the market,” he said.
“This is the way that we can boost our business growth over the long term, despite our relatively small size in this market.”