From nanny to restauranteur with 17 branches of Rosa’s Thai Café

Saiphin Moore at her latest branch of Rosa’s Thai Cafe in Liverpool (Photo by Alex Maguire)

Saiphin Moore, raised on a farm in the mountains in Northern Thailand, left the comfort of her home for life as an 18-year old nanny in Hong Kong, not speaking any English or Cantonese. She and her husband, Alex Moore, co-founded Rosa’s Thai Café, launching the first one in London, in 2008. In February and May 2019, she opened her first branches outside London, one in Liverpool and the latest (17th) one in Leeds. She has also published 2 Thai cookbooks. Here is a woman who is living her dream and embodies the idea that anyone can succeed if they try hard enough.

Having moved to the UK with her husband and children in 2005 after selling her Thai restaurant in Hong Kong, Saiphin didn’t know what she wanted to do. At a friend’s suggestion, she started taking her homecooked Thai dishes to her friend’s office. “That way, I could see what the people in London liked”. Soon after, to meet demand, she had a food stall in Brick Lane Market.

In 2008, she took on a shop in Spitalfields. In the fiercely competitive bidding process, she played her trump card by presenting her fresh spring rolls “with my peanut sauce, my special one, the bestseller in my restaurant in Hong Kong.” Here, the first Rosa’s Thai Café was born.

The Moores had total conviction and immersed themselves in their new venture, whatever it took. She recalls, “Oh my God, what are we going to do? We have no money! So, we set up our restaurant with a Hong Kong credit card and a tiny bit of the money from selling my farm in Thailand”. They couldn’t get a UK credit card due to lack of credit history.

By 2009, Saiphin had her eye on site no. 2 in Soho. Again, they didn’t have any money. When she suggested selling their property in Hong Kong to finance the second site, her husband exclaimed: “Oh my God, selling our property?” Her response was: “Yes, put everything in.” So, all on black then. This commitment and total self-belief in her food and concept took them on a journey that I doubt, her 14-year old self (when she opened her noodle shop in her parents’ home) could only dream of. With no Dragons Den around at the time, financially, they relied on their family and friends. In 2016, they secured £1.8 million funding from Santender to finance expansion[i]. In 2018, they sold a majority stake in the restaurants to the US private equity firm, TriSpan[ii]. By February 2019, their ferocious appetite for expansion doubled the number of restaurants from 8 to 16 in under 2 years.

Aged 14, she began her first enterprise by setting up her own noodle shop. “Because I love noodles so much, I spent a lot of money, buying noodles from the shops. I always like to trade, set it up and sell”. She proudly says that she still has the table used in her noodle shop. She reminisces, “When I was about 7 years old, I used to help my parents in their grocery shop. I was left to sell things by myself. I grew herbs and vegetables on my own farm. I used that money to fund my trip to Hong Kong to work as a nanny. One day, I was sitting in the farm and I could see something move in the sky. At the time, I didn’t know that it was an aeroplane. I was thinking: Why was that star moving all the time?”

Saiphin Moore, aged 17, at her noodle shop at her parents’ house in Thailand, which she opened aged 14.

A little while later, she heard on the radio that there was a nanny job opportunity in Hong Kong. She jumped at the chance and took a bus by herself, aged 17 to the city, some 70 km away, to be interviewed. The recruitment agency told her to learn to introduce herself in English. That was the sum total of her English. At the second interview, she was asked to go for an interview in Bangkok that night. She borrowed money from her parents to take the 7-hour bus ride by herself. She says that she was the first girl in her hometown (with a population of about 6,500 people) to go away. “I just wanted to have a new adventure, to get to know the city, because I had never lived in a city before.”

She spent the next 20 years in Hong Kong, the city of all cities, with all its feverish energy and vibrancy, where her entrepreneurship really took off. She went on to open her Thai grocery shop, aged 23 and eventually opened her first Thai restaurant in Hong Kong, called TukTukthai. During our chat, she spoke some Cantonese, which she learned in Hong Kong.

Before meeting Saiphin, I was rather sceptical as to how she could maintain the standard of cooking throughout her 17 restaurants. “The head chef from one restaurant and I would train the team [at the new restaurant] to cook exactly the same [as us].” Eventually, they started a central kitchen, which produces all the sauces, spring rolls, satay etc, so that “we control everything”. “I cook to my taste - not the customer’s taste. I haven’t toned down [the spiciness].If they don’t ask us to put less chilli in, we cook exactly the way we eat.”

She works with farmers in Thailand to produce various ingredients. Noodles and curry pastes (which are freshly made twice a week) are shipped over by plane. “I believe in working with local people (in Thailand) to help them. The best thing is the paste is so good, very fresh.” She tells me that in 2018, she, her husband and some staff donated 2 million Thai Baht (£48,600) to various causes including buying equipment for a local hospital “because the hospital in Thailand is so poor, especially in the northern part”. They made another donation in January 2019.

At the end of the interview, Saiphin mentioned that she was on her way to the Carnaby Street site to console the staff there. The head chef there passed away 2 days earlier after a stroke while in Thailand. She appeared moved, her eyes looking away, saying that her staff was “like family to me”. She helps out in the kitchen of the restaurants whenever they are short-staffed. She also wants to show that she cares. She said that she felt bad that she could not go to the funeral in Thailand, as it was going to be on the same day as the opening of her Liverpool branch.

In addition to the 17 Rosa’s Thai Café sites, Saiphin also runs Lao Café, introducing Laotian cuisine to Londoners. “Lao cuisine actually is my comfort food” and “the food that we sell at Lao Café is whatI eat with my parents. [It is] similar to north eastern Thai food.” She plans to expand Lao Café and start a new noodle shop, going back to how she first started, selling noodles, her first love, aged 14.

Her curiosity and drive never seems to abate. I am struck by her boundless energy, new ideas, courage and resilience from a young age, having to start a new life, first in Hong Kong and then England. Where did all this come from? Taking on responsibility and becoming self-reliant early on in life and not having many material things? Or, just following her dream?

Read review of Rosa’s Thai Café→

March 2019 - updated June 2019

[i]https://www.bighospitality.co.uk/Article/2016/01/26/Rosa-s-Thai-Cafe-to-expand-after-landing-1.8m-investment

[ii]https://www.thecaterer.com/articles/529803/trispan-acquires-majority-stake-in-rosas-thai-cafe