A special invite has our US based team hanging out in the Bay area recently, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to share how we brought Courageous Kitchen vibes to employees at Airbnb headquarters!
Courageous Kitchen larb and papaya salad stations in the kitchen at Airbnb Headquarters.
One of the most important ways we raise funds is by hosting tourists for food related experiences in Bangkok and San Diego. Much of this entrepreneurial arm of our charity is possible because of programs like Airbnb Experiences, where Courageous Kitchen is featured as a Social Impact activity. The designation refers to recognized charities who host on the platform to bolster their causes, and has all commission fees waived by Airbnb. Not only is Courageous Kitchen one of only 400 such experiences worldwide, we are the first and only social impact experience in Bangkok.
We’re proud to be working with Airbnb, and most recently Christy was invited to teach a Thai food workshop at their renowned headquarters in San Francisco’s hip SoMa district. Along with longtime volunteer, Beatriz, they taught members of the Airbnb Experiences team how to make traditional Thai iced tea, papaya salad (aka somtam), and a Lao style minced meat salad full of herbs and chilies (aka larb). If you’re unfamiliar with these dishes, lovers of Thai food can tell you that along with some sticky rice, they quickly become one of the most sought after meals you can get in Thailand.
Christy greeting Airbnb employees with a traditional “wai.” A polite Thai gesture when you meet or part from one another.
To start off their class, Beatriz showed the group of nearly 30 guests how to make their own Thai tea. She then shared her story of how she became involved with Courageous Kitchen, stemming mostly from her own familial ties to refugees. Her grandparents were spies for the United States Army, and fled Indonesia sometime in the 1950s to avoid being caught by the local government. Next, Christy demonstrated two of her favorite Thai and Lao salads which are staples in her Laotian household. Christy’s background not only provides the cultural context to work with our students, but her own story resonates with theirs deeply. Her parents, who escaped Laos in the early 1980’s lived and worked in a refugee camp in Thailand before resettling to the US where she was born.
The narratives of the people behind the food, are just as important as the food we serve, in helping others understand our mission and vision. By sharing our personal stories with our guests, we realize just how much our own paths are connected with those of our Courageous Kitchen families as well. As Social Impact hosts on Airbnb, we want the customers in our cooking classes and street food tours to understand where their dollars are being spent, and be able to walk away with both satisfied bellies and hearts, knowing they helped a noble cause.
In our short time taking over the jumbo kitchen in Airbnb Headquarters, we attempted to give employees who visited, a mini taste of what we offer each and every guest. That’s a quick serving of friendship paired with cold drinks, spicy bites, and a bold brand of courage that leads us to fight for the most marginalized.
Stephanie, Beatriz, and Christy pose with some of the Airbnb staff
Our team is grateful for the continued support from Airbnb and the entire Experiences community. We’ve met and partnered with some amazing entrepreneurs in California and hope to forge more friendships with likeminded organizations in the future.
We look forward to sharing our story in a kitchen near you!
Special Thanks and hugs to Stephanie H. of Airbnb, for the invite and support every step of the way!
Since we launched our social enterprise in 2017, our main business efforts have centered around giving our visitors great cooking classes. When we’re speaking to schools or promoting our efforts in the US, we point to the smiley photos of guests with smoking hot plates of pad thai, as a symbol of our efforts. But making your Thai favorites in our cooking class is NOT the only way travelers to Bangkok are supporting the Courageous Kitchen. In fact, more and more people are beginning to discover our tours and community work because of our obsession with Thailand’s street food.
Experience from years in Bangkok hunting great street food and restaurants was channeled into our tour Street Food 101 in late 2017. We’ve pushed the goal of the tour beyond overstuffing you with tasty Thai treats (which is definitely a major part of the plan), to introducing you how to navigate the amazing and intimidating hawker fare available in the main streets and back alleys all over the city. This doen’t just begin when the tour starts, but guests can even download our street food pocket guide to begin studying in advance for our crash course in street food mastery.
Still we didn’t expect the tour to become popular. But with nearly zero promotion, people hunting a unique street food experience began finding us. This always comes as a surprise because the tour description is written in a way as to turn away many of people reading. With only a few seats available on the tour each week, we want to make sure we’re attracting adventurous eaters who’ll make the most of the chance to feast on authentic, and often terrifically spicy street food fare. For a tour of Bangkok’s Chinatown or for a more general survey of popular street food, we’re happy to point people to another company instead.
The controversy surrounding Thailand’s street food bans, and Michelin stars being dished out to such low key eateries in Bangkok, must have also helped propel travelers’ curiosity because we have been busy. What else could explain our local newspaper mention below, sent by a family from South Africa?
We’re still incredulous!
“You’ll end up having a better understanding of why Bangkok is considered one of the top street food cities in the world…”
Through word of mouth or social media, so many of you found us online, that midway through 2018, the cooking class and street food tours were starting to provide a significant amount of fundraising for the families we help. This has meant more budget for kids cooking classes, and being able to distribute rice and other staples to families in need.
For now atleast, our cooking classes are still our most popular activity. But don’t be surprised if you began to hear more about our street food exploits. We know that impacting our local community by serving people in need, and encouraging our guests to become better travelers, is what truly makes this unique experience a fully flavored food tour, and we hope to share it with more of you in 2019.
PS – Special thanks to Karin and family for finding, scanning, and sharing this article with us!
Author: Dwight
Dwight is the director of Courageous Kitchen, and loves sharing his passion for food with new people.
We love social validation when we’re shopping. This goes for everything from taking a friend shopping when you’re feeling indecisive, to asking a friend their opinion on the charity you’re choosing to support. That’s why it’s a huge accomplishment that our Courageous Kitchen cooking class for tourists has surpassed 100 reviews on Airbnb Experiences. This is no easy accomplishment, and we’re proud to have garnered so many positives feedback in less than a year on the platform.
What is an Airbnb Social Impact Experience?
This past January we celebrated a year since the launch of our social enterprise offering cooking classes to travelers visiting Bangkok. As a new business, we really struggled during the first year to get new customers. Fortunately, we did have some success as one of the early experiences on the Airbnb marketplace called Airbnb Experiences. Most people know the company as an affordable way to find lodging when traveling, but they have recently begun offering other activities to travelers looking for things to do in new cities, including some with a significant social impact.
“Wonderful experience!”
Without a doubt it can be hard to choose a cooking class in Bangkok. There are so many classes at different price levels and there are a variety of other online markets as well. This means when customers find our class highly recommended by Airbnb’s customers, they can expect our class is different from the run of the mill cooking classes offered by tour companies. In addition, as a recognized 501c3 in good standing, Airbnb collects no commission on the bookings made on their site. That means more money for buying quality ingredients, equipment, and funding our outreach in Bangkok!
Growing Pains and Negative Reviews
We’ve been teaching children in the marginalized community we serve to thrive in kitchen spaces for 5 years now. However, when we started this fun activity to help pump nutrition into the community, we didn’t expect it to prepare us to later host professional classes. In fact, teaching 30 children to cook at once would seem a lot more intimidating to most people, compared with the stress of teaching a small group of foreigners. However, we’ve had to learn other aspects of running the business beyond the teaching the hard way. For example, pricing can have a big impact on experience. If we’re priced too low, people book in hurry, classes are more crowded, and guests may arrive not knowing much about our organization. On the contrary, if the pricing is too high, we have fewer customers and their expectations for the cooking class are unrealistic.
Everyone who steps into our kitchen is different and we want to have an experience all can enjoy. This presents a unique challenge, however, that is especially difficult when managing different languages and personalities in a group. So while our reviews have been overwhelmingly positive, we have also had negative reviews impact our bookings. When customers are unhappy, we discuss their feedback as a team and consider how to improve the experience in the future. Here are common reasons people don’t enjoy the class, that we’re working to mitigate or have already solved:
Customer doesn’t know the class is charity run
Customer is uncomfortable because of heat, chairs, chili, amount of standing, etc…
Customer does not speak strong English
The most common problem our team has encountered when hosting guests from around the world has been around managing expectations. Since many customers book in a hurry, they often don’t read all of the info about the class. This means customers can arrive expecting to be cooking in a professional kitchen, or in today’s tense political climate, may not know until arriving they have booked a class in support of refugees — often a divisive political issue. All of these issues are exacerbated when customers don’t speak much English or Thai. We won’t be able to solve all of these problems instantly, but we strive to produce a high quality class each session, and want to be transparent about the challenges.
How You Can Help
As people learn about opportunities with Airbnb, it becomes more competitive. We have to work harder at generating more direct bookings, instead of being overly dependent on Airbnb or another third party. We always need help sharing our cooking class with friends visiting Bangkok, and need continued support for the educational support we offer those in need. Finally, if you’ve attended a class, consider leaving a review on our growing Tripadvisor profile as well!
Thank you for following our project, and until the next update stay courageous!
Just a quick message to all of our customers stateside. Because of the impact of the recent wildfires, we have been forced to reschedule this month’s classes. Our team is safe, but located in an area not far from where people have lost their homes and livelihoods.
Thank you for your patience as we’ve had to reschedule our cooking classes for the month. We will return to our regular schedule in the new year and pray you all a swift recovery.
Note: If you missed the announcement that we had launched our cooking classes in San Diego, we’d gladly welcome you to try our classes in 2018. You can even book the class on airbnb!
