Parichat Laisathit has an enviable favourite pastime. She loves eating bakery goods at hotels and restaurants, but insists this isn't just because she is the owner of the well-known Gateaux House bakery chain.

She says that eating bakery items helps her keep in touch with new trends: what are the latest recipes and the best-looking baked goodies in town.

Sometimes she adapts what she learns to improve her Gateaux House products but she doesn't take it all too seriously.

"It's kind of a family activity," says Parichat, owner and managing director of the 20-year-old Gateaux House. "When people suggest any good bakery or restaurant to me or if I find a recommended place in magazines, I always persuade my family to visit them, then test and comment just like normal visitors."

Her favourite bakery shop is in the Four Seasons Hotel. She has been a fan since the hotel was known as The Regent Bangkok.

The shop at the Four Seasons means much more to her than just a place to enjoy delicious bakery goods, as it is the place that inspired the concept of Gateaux House's first bakery.

"That hotel shop 20 years ago was decorated like a house. It looked warm and had a family-like atmosphere. So I brought interior designers with me and told them I wanted my bakery to share the same atmosphere," Parichat says.

She opened her first bakery at the teen-crowded Siam Square shopping area and featured home-style decoration with wood and subtle brown colours. Six months later, the first Gateaux House shop had gained a degree of public recognition.

Its various breads are an essential part of its success. Parichat's uncle, who had experience in the bakery business in Taiwan, is the man behind the bread recipes.

Parichat says Gateaux House was founded mainly to fulfil her uncle's dream to have a bakery shop in Thailand, and it had originally intended to sell cakes as the main products. However, the cakes didn't sell like hot cakes because Thai people were unfamiliar with them at the time, so the shop adjusted its menu by increasing its range of breads.

In creating the menu, Parchat is the key person responsible for testing the latest trends. Then she works with her uncle and colleagues to create new flavours using a mix-and-match method, a process that is repeated many times. This approach has proven successful.

Gateaux House now has 28 shops and 12 kiosks, with estimated sales this year of Bt400 million.

Her uncle's baking talents and her eagerness to test new products are the major factors that lead thousands of customers a day to crowd into Gateaux House branches.

"I like the way the shop creates various breads, like cashew nut. I like to go in and buy its breads whenever I'm near one of its branches. The atmosphere of the shops has also attracted me to make appointments there with my life-insurance customers," says Pimjan Hanlucha, a 28-year-old financial adviser at Prudential TSLife Assurance. "And I like its paper bag logo. I feel that I'm carrying a bag with expensive goods inside."

The yellow bag is a source of pride for Parichat.

"It took time for people to see the yellow bag and immediately recognise that it belongs to Gateaux House," she says.

Of course, good location, nice decoration and regular marketing campaigns are key to success, but above all this there is the quality of the bakery products.

"A chef from a renowned hotel told me that if you have the best raw materials, you will have the best products," she says.

Another key is being happy at what one does.

"I always tell my colleagues to put their hearts into whatever they are doing, instead of just thinking of it as a job. Because if you're happy with that, you will have great motivation to always make things better," Parichat adds.

Her happiness and passion for bread have inevitably led to the successful growth of Gateaux House.

Nitida Asawanipont

The Nation