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Krua Thai Cookery School.
A Thai cookery centre in Scotland attracts
students from all over the world who wish to
discover the secrets of traditional Thai
cookery and benefit from our vast
experience.
‘Krua’ means kitchen in Thai. The school
was established in the multicultural city of
Edinburgh in 1997. We offer a unique
programme of training in many aspects of
Thai cuisine. The School is well known for
achieving the highest standards in
traditional Thai cookery, fruit and
vegetable carving and food presentation.
Our mission:
To be number one specialist cookery school
offering a unique standard of training in
high status traditional Thai cuisine and
blending techniques to professional chefs
and lovers of fine food. We achieve this by
using a fully qualified Thai chef with a high
level of expertise and a wealth of
experience working with executives and other
top flight clients. The excellent value and
quality of service we offer each client
ensures excellent customer retention. We
are committed to continuously improving our
level of service so as to not only meet, but
also surpass our customers’ expectations.
Our Value:
We make culinary secrets available to
clients who wish to acquire authentic Thai
recipes and understand the intricacies of
high quality and delicious traditional Thai
cuisine. We use special techniques that
enable our students to master these skills
in a very short time and get ahead of their
competitors. Students receive precise and
detailed personal coaching to ensure they
acquire as much knowledge as possible and
are able to deliver high quality results
every time in the real world. Our
philosophy is that performance comes first
and money comes second. Our primary
objective is to make each student achieve the
highest standard of traditional Thai
culinary art through our teaching and
coaching techniques.
Customer care:
Our strong both internal and external
customer focus. You will enjoy customer
friendly, polite, personal service, plus
highly effective and prompt attention. Our
premises are smart and fully equipped with
high standard facilities. We also guarantee
clients’ privacy from the media.
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Marketing strategy:
Our attitude, passionate, strong performance
and many years’ experience in this
specialist field are the main marketing
tools we use to sustain our long-term
business goal. Many of our customers hear
of us by word of mouth. We also advertise
in various international and local
newspapers and magazines, such as BBC Olive
Magazine, Waitrose Magazine, Sainsbury
Magazine, Foodie Magazine, Delicious Magazine, Vogue
magazine, Holiday courses UK & Ireland, ion
Magazine, No. 1 Magazine, Vogues, The
Herald, Edinburgh Evening News, The
Scotsman, The Sunday Times, The Herald and
Post, Prevue Cinema magazine, Daily Record and Uptown Magazine.
Our students:
Each year an average 69% of students are
male and 31 % female, both professionals and
non-professionals, with A and B category.
They come from all over the UK and the rest
of the world, such as America, Australia,
Bangladesh, Belgium, Canada, France,
Germany, Guernsey, Hong Kong, India,
Indonesia, Iraq, Ireland, Italy, Japan,
Malaysia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Spain, Sri
Lanka, Sweden, Trinidad and Zimbabwe.
Our professional students
are high calibre, for the most part
executive chefs, development chefs, food
technologists, house managers, butlers,
private chefs and sous chefs from various
organisations such as boutique hotels, hotel
chains, food manufacturers, airlines,
yachts, and up-market bars and restaurants.
Our non-professional students
cover a wide variety of interesting careers
and we have taught: accountants, architects,
bankers, business tycoons, chairmen, chief
executives, comedians, company directors,
creative directors, dentists, developers,
doctors, editors, engineers, estate
managers, film producers, film stars,
financiers, fire fighters, hotel
proprietors, housewives, international
professional gamblers, IT consultants, jazz
singers, journalists, lairds, landscape
architects, lawyers, lecturers, managers,
musicians, nurses, opera singers, personal
executives, physiotherapists, pilots,
professional motor racing drivers,
professional golfers, professional jet
skiers, recruitment directors, scientists,
pharmacists, quantity surveyors, sales
representative directors and teachers. All
our students thoroughly enjoy our service,
as evidenced by our
testimonials.
Community:
The school has supported various
organisations and fund raising events, Staff
development programme, National food safety
week, Minority Ethnic Carers of Older People
Project (MECOPP), healthy eating for parents
in deprived areas, learning week programme
for Fire brigade, Crime stop project,
schools fund raising and other associations
and charities.
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Our profile and sample organisations we have
death with
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We have had various articles written
about the School - by Mr. Neil MacLean
of the Sunday Times; the
Daily Express; Business a.m.;
The Herald, The Scotsman, Evening News,
and we appeared in ‘Sawasdee’, the in-flight magazine
of Thai Airways International.
The School has also received an
excellent report from Food & Travel
Magazine June 2006 as “Top of the
Class”.
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Rujira has been invited to work as the
private chef/specialist chef for the
planning and implementation of various
theme buffets and special banquets for
several European executives. Our
clients include the international
presidents and other chief executives of
the Hilton International Group. The
menus presented have included top
quality traditional Thai cuisine using
superior food presentation techniques
and including the Royal Thai culinary
art of fruit and vegetable carving.
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We were honoured to work with the Hilton
International Group in implementing a
special buffet for 300 delegates from
all over the world for the launch of Ms.
Saigon in Edinburgh.
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We provided the catering for 750 guests
at the prestigious Edinburgh
International Festival - Perrier
Comedy Awards ceremony 2005 with
special Thai canapés and stunning food
presentation.
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The School has also featured several
times on Scottish TV and Grampian TV’s
food and drink programme ‘Air A Bhord’.
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Our clients for flexible training/food
consultancy/food
implementation/executive
lunch/dinner/team building include:
Caledonian Hilton Hotel, Hilton Dublin,
Hilton Craigendarroch in Aberdeen,
Holiday Inn, Delta Group-Sweden, Food manufacturers for all UK
supermarkets (such as M&S, Sainsburys,
Tesco, Waitrose, Asda), RBS UK
executives, PKF finance co., Capital
Credit Union, WL Gore, Maximillion & San
Frontier event companies, various small
luxury house hotels, up market Cookery
School, up-market bars and restaurants.
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We were honoured to take part in a fruit
and vegetable carving demonstration at
King James Thistle Hotel, Edinburgh
organised by the Tourism Authority of
Thailand during the launch of “Amazing
Thailand 1998-1999”.
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COURSE LEADER
Rujira
Yuenboon Herd – BA(Hons) IHM, HND. Cul.
Dip. HTM, Dip. BA
Thai culinary artist
was born in Chiangmai, northern Thailand.
She was educated at Wattano Thai Payap
Ladies School in Chiangmai where she learnt
all of her basic skills in cookery, fruit &
vegetable carving and other facets of
classical Thai culture.
Rujira gained a Diploma in Hotel Management
and a Diploma in Business Administration
from Ratchamangkala University in Thailand.
She also trained in professional cookery -
Higher National Diploma (HND) in Culinary
Arts with Management at Edinburgh Telford
College and BA(Hons-2.1) International
Hospitality Management at Queen Margaret
University in Edinburgh. She has worked in
various 4-5 star hotels such as
the
Amari Rincome Hotel, Chiang Inn Hotel, the
Hilton and the Sheraton in Thailand and the
UK.
She has worked as a duty manager to a
quality 400 seat restaurant and was later
offered a job as personal assistant to a
Thai silk export company. She later joined
an international travel company specialising
in the Korean National Tourism Corporation.
Rujira married a Scottish architect in 1986
and has one son  .
Her first employment in Britain was as
part-time tutor of Thai language at the
Centre of Continuing Education Department,
University of Edinburgh (1986-1994). At the
same time Rujira ran a very successful
wholesale business importing Thai
handicrafts (1987-1997). But, as her first
love was cooking, she also worked as a chef
at Scotland’s first Thai restaurant-80 seats
(1987-1997) where she gained
extensive experience in the real world of
restaurant and commercial catering.
Combining her business and cookery skills,
Rujira then opened her own highly popular
and successful Krua Thai Cookery School
(1997).
Rujira has studied at several colleges in
Edinburgh including Queen Margaret
University School of Business and Enterprise
where she won the ‘Sir Alex Fletcher
prize’ for ‘the best business plan for
small business entrepreneurship’ while
studying for her honours degree. Her
academic supervisor has used her business
plan as a good teaching platform for new
students on the course. Rujira has been
invited by various organisations to explain
to diverse audiences the philosophy behind
her successful small business and to recount
her experiences as a specialist chef to
various European executive chiefs. Her
creative ideas for running a small business
have also attracted the attention of final
year international students in the business
and enterprise sector to help them complete
their assignments and dissertations. Rujira
has also worked as a business mentor for
many small business enterprises both in
Thailand and Scotland. Her special interest
subject is effective quality management and
service delivery resulting in internal and
external customer retention.
Rujira has a very hectic life style and
is no stranger to
meeting urgent deadlines for private
sector contracts. She has been involved in
the Adult Learning Programme run by the City
of Edinburgh Council and has presented 1-day
courses ‘Thai cookery with a chef’
for several years now in various schools in
Edinburgh. The classes have been very
popular and are fully booked very quickly.
She was originally asked to present a 4-8
week series of lessons, but unfortunately,
due to other commitments, she is only able
to provide a one-off lesson at each venue in the summer and autumn.
Rujira has
also been asked by various agencies to teach
Thai to business people and to act as a
freelance translator and interpreter to
various organisations. The work normally
involves police, court work, health care,
local government and the private sector
around Scotland. All work is carried out to
a professional standard and in the strictest
confidence.
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