Covid-19 at Wild
We did it!
As you can imagine, Covid-19 hit Cambodia, and Siem Reap in particular quite hard. As a touristic destination, and Cambodia having closed its borders for 18 months, the situation was, let's say, complicated. Since borders reopen, a lot of our guests ask us about our experience in this very particular context and how we survived. Here are some answers to your questions
Did we close during Covid-19?:
Very briefly yes, in 2 occasions. First was at the very beginning of Covid, borders started to close and many countries started setting lockdown. We did not have many information about the virus and case figures in Cambodia were very low and honestly difficult to believe (turns out we actually never had a first wave in 2020). In this context, to protect our staff and ourselves, we decided to close for a while. We reopened 5 weeks later as the sanitary situation did not deteriorate in Cambodia. We promised our staff to pay them full wage during this closing time, which we did.
The Second closing was in 2021, all restaurants were ordered to close for dine-in for a few month. On a couple of occasions it was not allowed in Siem Reap to get out of the district you lived in, we could get authorisation for our team to come to work, except in September, when we had to closed completely for about a month, after a visit from the ministry of health, we were granted the authorisation to reopen for dine in, following sanitary rules.
How did we manage our staff: a
Eco-Responsible: we care about our planet, and try to reduce our impact to the minimum possible.
Socially committed: we help many local NGOs through donations, fundraising, …
Good Food & Drinks
We always loved cooking and eating good things. So when we decided to create Wild, it was obvious we had to work on the recipes until we were proud to serve them.
It took us about 1 year to come up with the 12 first recipes of Fresh and fried Spring Rolls. And since then, every new recipe is tested tens of times, it can take us several months to come up with a new spring roll we consider worth serving. And once on the menu, we always value feedbacks. It helped us so much in the past, and we are sure it will also in the future.
Our cocktails and dishes are only made from quality produce, fresh fruits and vegetables (organic ones when available), as much as possible locally produced, and at least purchased from local and responsible providers we carefully selected.
Good Food & Drinks
We always loved cooking and eating good things. So when we decided to create Wild, it was obvious we had to work on the recipes until we were proud to serve them.
It took us about 1 year to come up with the 12 first recipes of Fresh and fried Spring Rolls. And since then, every new recipe is tested tens of times, it can take us several months to come up with a new spring roll we consider worth serving. And once on the menu, we always value feedbacks. It helped us so much in the past, and we are sure it will also in the future.
Our cocktails and dishes are only made from quality produce, fresh fruits and vegetables (organic ones when available), as much as possible locally produced, and at least purchased from local and responsible providers we carefully selected.
Good & Happy STAFF
Our team members are the keystone of our project. One of the very first requirements we set when we started talking about moving to Cambodia was being able to help the local people, starting with our future employees.
Our amazing team members are treated well above the local standards. We offer good salaries, with bonuses when the context lets us do so, and obviously, all the tips (cash or digital) are shared between our local employees only.
We adapt working hours in order to facilitate their family life or in some cases to enable them to attend university classes. From their first day at work, they are all given health insurance.
We are really proud that during Covid, we haven’t let go any of our employees, whatever. When they were too many in regard to the attendance of the restaurant, we extended the opening hours to have them working as much as possible, and even during the period we were ordered to close by provincial/governmental decision, we kept on paying them a part of their salaries so they could live decently, regardless the financial cost.
Eco-responsible
As you may have witnessed, and despite enormous and encouraging progress those last years, Cambodia has a long way to go in terms of environmental awareness. We consider it is our duty to do what we can to protect the environment in our every day operations, as well as teaching our team to do so too. So here is a non exhaustive list of things we pay attention too:
- Plastics: We serve filtrated water for free, you won’t see a single plastic bottle in our little paradise.
No plastic straw either, actually, by default, we don’t give any straw, but if you ask for it, we always have reusable or compostable ones.
We gave our market providers reusable bags so they could reduce their consumption too. Guess what? They bought much more and now use it for all their customers! - Wastes: Recycling is not an easy task in Cambodia, but we still have some options. For example, we keep our empty cans and metal wastes, once we have enough, our team members sell it by the weight to recycling companies. We also give our used frying oil to Naga Earth, who turn it into Bio Diesel and Soap. so if the power cuts, our generator works with our old oil, and if you use the washrooms, you will use it too!
For what we can’t recycle, we try to reduce as much as possible :
We buy locally and as much as possible provide reusable, clean containers to be delivered.
We compost our organic wastes too, and the garden loves it. - Awareness: Our team members are not allowed to bring any single use plastic in the restaurant. We provide them with reusable containers and bottles to use when buying food/drinks to take away from other places. And of course, they are encourage to use our own produce, for free or at cost. They save money, and plastic!
We also love to take part in the city cleanings organised by NGOs or the commune chief.
Eco-responsible
As you may have witnessed, and despite enormous and encouraging progress those last years, Cambodia has a long way to go in terms of environmental awareness. We consider it is our duty to do what we can to protect the environment in our every day operations, as well as teaching our team to do so too. So here is a non exhaustive list of things we pay attention too:
- Plastics: We serve filtrated water for free, you won’t see a single plastic bottle in our little paradise.
No plastic straw either, actually, by default, we don’t give any straw, but if you ask for it, we always have reusable or compostable ones.
We gave our market providers reusable bags so they could reduce their consumption too. Guess what? They bought much more and now use it for all their customers! - Wastes: Recycling is not an easy task in Cambodia, but we still have some options. For example, we keep our empty cans and metal wastes, once we have enough, our team members sell it by the weight to recycling companies. We also give our used frying oil to Naga Earth, who turn it into Bio Diesel and Soap. so if the power cuts, our generator works with our old oil, and if you use the washrooms, you will use it too!
For what we can’t recycle, we try to reduce as much as possible :
We buy locally and as much as possible provide reusable, clean containers to be delivered.
We compost our organic wastes too, and the garden loves it. - Awareness: Our team members are not allowed to bring any single use plastic in the restaurant. We provide them with reusable containers and bottles to use when buying food/drinks to take away from other places. And of course, they are encourage to use our own produce, for free or at cost. They save money, and plastic!
We also love to take part in the city cleanings organised by NGOs or the commune chief.
Socially committed
As a developing country, Cambodia faces many challenges created by poverty, especially in rural areas. Cambodia being a farming country, hunger luckily isn’t the most concerning (although it does exist of course). Health and education, among other things, are, in our opinion top priorities. This situation comes out of the history of the country, when all “intellectuals”, such as teachers and doctors (but also many other professions) were chased and murdered, forced to leave the country by the Khmer Rouge regime back in the 70s. Not only this created an immediate and dramatic lack, but it still has a serious effect: for decades, there has been no-one to train new teachers and doctors, and this gap will probably not be filled for a few more decades. Given this fact and considering many families choose to have their children working very young in order to bring money to the household, we chose to focus mainly on helping serious organisation that work on those topics. But we also love to help on other subject, such as animal welfare, LGBT integration and safety, environmental actions, and many more.
Our action takes place at different levels :
1. We raise money through our “social shop” at the back of the restaurant from which ALL proceeds are donated, or special sales/actions/events all along the year.
2. We donate time to help NGOs in our areas of expertise, for example auditing a social coffee shop to help them with their struggles, or offering cocktails for a charity event.
3. We love talking about and highlighting great organisations, social events, and of course we always donate prizes for charity raffles etc.
Want to support us?
It’s free, it’s fast, and much appreciated! Here are some ideas: