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Peter Brongers is an expatriate of Dutch origin who knows South-East Asia inside out, a region in which he is well known for his skills as a development expert. He now devotes part of his professional activity to working alongside Jef Moons, with whom he shares the same ambitions: to make Kep West a benchmark for tourism, cuisine, arts and sport, as well as a driving force for the development of the region.
Can you introduce yourself in a few words?
My name is Peter Brongers and I'm Dutch. I first came to Cambodia in 1994. Before that, I lived in Hong Kong. There I set up a company that dealt with wastewater treatment and industrial water treatment plants. We designed and built in Thailand.
What is your educational background and area of expertise?
I have degrees in economics, law and business management. I also obtained a master’s degree in management from the University of Groningen. I also did the Executive Program at the IMD in Switzerland. My career began in the 80s with my first job being in sales for Fokker Aircraft, a long time ago.
Your first contact with Asia
I went to Asia for the first time in 1994. It was in Hong Kong that I set up the office of this Dutch water treatment company. Of course, we didn't have any production in Hong Kong. Everything was done in Thailand.
I visited the Thai company every month or two. Hong Kong was incredibly expensive at the time. I think accommodation was even more expensive than it is today. So, staying in Hong Kong didn't make sense for us, because production was taking place in Thailand. At that time there was an issue between the shareholders and the German partner withdrew. So, they were urgently looking for someone to take over the management of the company and they offered me the job.
Tell us more about this activity
In the early 90s, major road construction projects were launched in Bangkok. To carry out these projects, it was necessary to use launching guiders to place the concrete elements. Formwork was also needed to pour the concrete, and that's what from then on our factory produced.
So, I arrived in Thailand just as the big construction boom was beginning. I took a few weeks' holiday before I started and went to Vietnam for a month. I then moved to Bangkok. Our factory was in Chonburi, and we had a good friend, Father John Visser, who was then in the process of setting up the first Don Bosco school in Phnom Penh, on Rue 2004. He asked us if we could help him. So we donated most of the building's metal structures to him. We helped him build the first Don Bosco school in the Kingdom. That was my first contact with Cambodia. Two years later, in 1996, the second Don Bosco school was built in Sihanoukville. We offered them the same support, but the school was much smaller, and we simply added a few steel structures.
In Bangkok, I became a member of the Rotary Club Bangkok South, and we did some projects with our sister club, the Rotary Club Phnom Penh. I've kept a lot of friends from that time. People like His Excellency Dr Sok Siphanna and Jeroen Van Daalen from Celliers d'Asie. I met them all in the 90s at the Rotary Club.
Your first business in Cambodia?
In 2009, I went to Cambodia to open Kingdom Beer. We opened the first production unit for premium beer. We invested five million dollars in the brewery. I did it in collaboration with Leopard Capital. So most of the funding came from a private equity fund. We started production in 2009. Everything went very well, but we made a strategic mistake at the time.
We wanted to produce a top-of-the-range beer. We were producing between 8,000 and 9,000 cases a month, which wasn't a lot. We had expansion plans, but we were only producing bottled beer. And we did very well. Within six months, we became the best-selling premium bottled beer in Phnom Penh.
But what we did not consider was that most Cambodians drink beer at weddings and at home and there are no fridges, so we needed to have cans. Canned beer was much more in demand than bottled beer. But when we came to this conclusion, we didn't have enough capital to buy a big canning line. So, after three years, I withdrew.
I then joined the Royal Group as Sr. Vice President business development. In 2012 I was responsible for opening the official dealership of BMW, the first luxury brand with a local presence. Within the Royal Group, I also oversaw KFC, Kentucky Fried Chicken. If you go into a KFC, you'll see that my face is still on some of the licenses on the wall.
In 2018, Royal Group sold BMW. The car business in Cambodia is tough because of the ‘grey market’. It's very difficult, as an official importer, to compete with grey importers because they don't declare the value properly, they don't have costly staff training, etc. The company was therefore loss-making, and we decided to sell the dealership to HGB.
At the time, HGB represented many brands, amongs others Lamborghini, Aston Martin, Maserati, Bentley, Rolls-Royce, Volvo, Kia and Mazda.
I joined HGB as CEO for the FMCG and restaurant business. We had a few restaurants like Little Sheep, Ajisen Ramen Cambodia and Haagen-Dazs ice cream.
Then COVID came along, and business suffered a lot, including for HGB. So, we decided to go our separate ways, simply because the budget was reduced.
Since then, I joined the Kylla Group, that advises companies on mergers, acquisitions and financing. I'm still part of Kylla and responsible for South-East Asia.
Over the years, I've carried out several activities, as advisor to the Minister of Tourism, board member of the CTF (Cambodia Tourism Federation and President of the NCCC, the Netherlands Cambodia Chamber of Commerce. For eight years I was President of the Cambodian Automotive Industry Federation. And... In fact, for the last three weeks, I've been back at the Federation, now as a member of the Board of Directors.
Tell us about your involvement and your passion for gastronomy
On the culinary side, I've always been very active. I'm an active member of the Beefsteak and Burgundy Club, the Cambodian branch of which I set up in 2009. I'm also a long-time member of the Chaine des Rôtisseurs and started that in Cambodia also in 2009. The two clubs are slightly different. The B&B is usually for men only, whereas the Chaine is more focused on fine dining with a higher budget and mixed membership.
I've always loved food. I grew up in a restaurant because my parents had a restaurant in the north of The Netherlands. I used to earn pocket money by helping in the kitchen and washing the dishes. And obviously, when you wash the dishes and you start watching how the food is prepared, it becomes something you love, and I've always loved good food.
What was your first contact with the Knai Bang Chatt?
In 2009, the first year we went to the coast, we stayed there because there weren't many good quality hotels in Kep and on the coast. There was the Independence in Sihanoukville and the Knai Bang Chatt in Kep. My mother came once or twice a year, and she really loved that hotel. So, when she came to Cambodia, we stayed there.
Today, the hotel complex has undergone a complete transformation...
Kep West is now a rather different and more ambitious project, and you get the best of both worlds. You can enjoy the tranquility and charm of Knai Bang Chatt, as well as the architecture and modern ambience of Kep West.
How did you get involved in this project?
The owner Jef Moons and I are good friends. It was during a friendly conversation that he told me he needed some advice for The Wave. Jef knows that I'm very involved in the gastronomic sector and that I could probably guide, advise and help the F&B team. In the early days, Jef had to reduce his operation and staff and needed an advisor who could come in regularly, come up with ideas for the restaurants and help with what is my area of expertise, which is management and development.
There are some excellent heads of department here, and the staff are open to ideas and very involved. So, I spend half the week with the local teams.
What are your impressions and ambitions for Kep West?
We need to attract more people because business is still relatively quiet. We can't do much more than what exists for architecture. I think The Wave is one of the most beautiful buildings on the Cambodian coast. If it were in Phuket, you'd probably have to book a week in advance to get a table.
What were your suggestions for the menus? Did you want it to match some of your personal tastes that you know are popular?
We have four restaurants and as many different menus. In the new building, we offer Crab & Co, the most refined restaurant, in a private setting overlooking the seafront. In the same space, you'll find Cafe Grande for casual, on-the-go meals or a gourmet afternoon coffee break.
Then there's The Deck, located on the terrace and perfect for sunset cocktails, snacks and tapas. Finally, there's The Strand, Knai Bang Chatt's signature restaurant. Here, breakfast is served to hotel guests and the restaurant is also open to outside guests who can enjoy tasty dishes at lunch and dinner. The Strand restaurant offers mainly local cuisine, but also some more international dishes on an à la carte menu.
What changes have you made?
I've simply created menus based on these four different styles. So, a customer who comes here can taste four different cuisines. What I've also done is to use the best quality products possible.
For example, the butter we offer our customers is Echiré butter. It's the best butter you can find in France. In fact, we import a lot but, if we find good quality products, we source them locally. Another example: steaks are one of the most popular dishes at Crab & Co. Our Tomahawk steak comes from Australia, it's Wagyu MS7-8. Another example is that we use spinach from France because the spinach we find locally doesn’t meet our standard. On the other hand, we use rocket from La Plantation de Kampot because it is even better than imported. We have a partnership with them for spices and, next door to La Plantation, there's an American who grows some very good fruit and vegetables, and we buy some from him.
We try to source local products as much as possible. But we dont hesitate to import if we can’t get the quality we want.
What are the results of this move towards a different, high-quality cuisine?
We're starting to get a good response from local customers, and even from the Chinese, who come for a day trip, who come here to dine at the Crab & Co. We're seeing a fairly encouraging, regular and steadily growing response.
The vision I have for Crab & Co is that it becomes a restaurant that people, even in Phnom Penh, say “let's take a trip to Kep West for fresh fish, and the best seafood in the country.”
So, you want to become a gastronomic destination too?
Yes, and it's happening. Often customers don't want to drive back and stay overnight. I think it's a perfect formula for local tourism.
Most of our customers are Cambodians. We sometimes have groups of Chinese, who come for dinner and sometimes spend the night here. And that's exactly what we want.
With the return of international tourism, this will be less necessary, but today we fill quite a few rooms with people who come especially for the quality of the cuisine in our restaurants. Of course, we have crab dishes and all the seafood that makes Kep so attractive, but we also offer Dover sole and bouillabaisse, probably the best in Cambodia.
Could you say that you are becoming the best gourmet restaurant on the coast?
I don't like to say it, I like customers to say it. I'm starting to hear “we had dinner last night at Crab & Co and the food is so good, much better than it was a few years ago”.
What is your ambition or vision for the coming years?
In the long term, we are working on projects such as Art for Kep. What we're trying to achieve with these projects is the development not just of Kep West, but for Kep West to become the driving force behind the further development of Kep.
There are only two places on the Cambodian coast: Sihanoukville and Kep. To a lesser extent, Cambodia is not yet a coastal destination and Kep and Sihanoukville have a completely different character. The advantage for Kep is that the region can really retain its old-world charm while evolving into a family-friendly, attractive and infrastructure-rich coastal destination.
Now, if we can combine heritage with art, music, exhibitions, film and music festivals, I think that's where the future lies, because that will attract people. Since October, we have been organizing concerts every weekend, not only here in Kep West, but also in other places. In May we will have an extension of the Cambodia International Film Festival at Kep West.
And how successful is this activity ?
A lot of people used to go home at six or seven after sunset, but now they stay and enjoy the music. So our vision is to become the driving force behind Kep's growth as a culinary and artistic destination. For me, fine dining is also a creativity and artistic expression.
Anything you'd like to add?
Along with 20 other people, I set up the Royal Cambodia Yacht Club last year. We are now an official association registered with the Ministry of the Interior. We have 20 founding members. We're a yacht club on paper, but we don't have a marina yet. So, we have a few friends, like my friend Daniel, who have yachts, but can't bring it here because we don't have a harbor. But in the future, we will have a marina.
