Faasai took Thai flavours to the suburbs – four restaurants and revenue doubled

The pandemic years brought Tampere's Faasai close to bankruptcy. The way out was not in the city centre but where families and retirees live. In under two years Faasai opened three new restaurants, and in little more than a year revenue grew from about €0.9 million to almost €2 million. Now the family business wants to become the best-known Thai chain in Finland. Solmio-kassa has been part of every opening.

Meet Faasai

Faasai is a Thai restaurant founded by Wanphen Vuori by Koskipuisto park in Tampere in 2005. The small restaurant on Koskikatu was long well regarded, and in 2024 readers of the travel media Top Taste voted it the best Thai restaurant in Finland.

Today there are four restaurants: Koskikatu 7 in the city centre, Koulutie 6 in Pirkkala, Hatanpään valtatie 26 and Ilmarinkatu 49 in Kaleva. The new locations were chosen with care. They sit in residential areas, along bus and tram routes and next to car parks. There are no parking fees and no steps at the door.

The concept is built on Finnish terms. Thailand has no buffet culture, but Finns want to eat plenty of different things at a fair price. So the new Faasais lead with a generous buffet: a salad bar, soup, curries and stir-fries, vegetarian options and desserts. The chefs use real coconut milk and their own spice blends. The buffet food is not made too hot, and anyone who wants more heat has a spice table of their own. Every restaurant also serves à la carte dishes, takeaway and catering.

Faasai employs 34 people, many of them with roots in Thailand.

Discover Faasai →

The person behind it

Sarawut Wong-Udommongkhon, CEO. He moved to Finland with his mother at 17, started his career in a Thai restaurant in Tampere and came to help when his mother opened the first Faasai. Today the business is run by the family: Sarawut, his wife Siriwan and their son Ekkarin. Wat Prompong is the restaurant manager.

Sarawut talks a lot about the customer experience. What matters most to him is that the restaurant is easy to reach and that customers come in steadily.

"We don't just look at the margin, we look at the customer's experience. We want a steady flow of customers who get to taste many different dishes at a good price."

Where they started

During the pandemic the Koskipuisto restaurant stayed afloat on takeaway. Prices went down, quality did not. Faasai food also went on sale at the Citymarket in Pirkkala, and the feedback was clear: older customers would have liked to eat in, but the centre was hard to get to. The dining room was cramped and there were steps at the door.

The family decided to take the restaurant to its customers. When Faasai Pirkkala opened in autumn 2024, running one restaurant quickly became running several. At lunchtime the buffet till gets construction workers, office staff and hospital employees all at once, and none of them has much time. Each pays a slightly different price: lunch, evening buffet, weekend, a child's price by age, a student or pensioner discount. Meanwhile à la carte and takeaway orders keep coming into the kitchen.

With several restaurants, the owner cannot stand behind every till. The numbers had to be visible somewhere other than the restaurant's own counter.

What they wanted to improve

• Keep the buffet queue moving at peak time, even with many prices.
• Open a new restaurant quickly with the same products and prices, and see sales from every restaurant in one place.

Why Solmio

The top requirement was that growth should not mean a new till project for every restaurant. Solmio-kassa runs in the cloud, so every Faasai works in the same system. When a new restaurant opens, the till signs in and the products, buffet prices and discounts are already there. No local server is needed, and devices can be managed remotely without a site visit.

On the till, the buffet prices are ready-made buttons, so a lunch customer pays in a few seconds. À la carte dishes such as panang curry and pad thai go straight from the till to the kitchen. Sales update in the reports in real time, and Sarawut and Wat can see in a browser how each restaurant is doing, day by day.

The first day in Kaleva

Faasai Kaleva opened on 1 April 2026 in the former ABC premises on Ilmarinkatu. The opening offer was a €9.90 buffet all day on weekdays, and a queue formed at the door before lunchtime.

Customers came from building sites, offices, Tays hospital and the Würth store next door. In the afternoon came families on their way to the Kauppi sports centre or Tammela stadium. At the till everyone paid their own price, and nobody had to work out which price applied when. In the kitchen, à la carte orders appeared as soon as they were placed.

During the opening week Kaleva served up to 600 customers a day. Even after the offer ended, it serves 300–400 a day.

"It was just crazy."

Wat Prompong | Restaurant manager, Faasai

• Restaurants: 4 (Koskikatu, Pirkkala, Hatanpää, Kaleva)
• New openings: 3 in under two years
• Staff: 34

What changed day to day

Faasai's growth comes from food, location and listening to customers. The till's job is to make sure growth does not slow down everyday work.

• 4 restaurants, 1 view — sales from every Faasai in the same report, in real time
• A ready till on opening day — a new restaurant gets its products and prices straight from the same system
• Seconds, not minutes — buffet prices are ready-made buttons, so the lunch queue keeps moving
• Orders straight to the kitchen — à la carte dishes never end up on paper slips

"When we open a new restaurant, the till is ready straight away. The products and prices are already there, and from day one we can see how the restaurant is doing."

Wat Prompong | Restaurant manager, Faasai

When you visit Faasai

The speciality of Faasai Kaleva is the Yoko-Thai Buffet, where sushi sits alongside the Thai dishes. Sushi is not traditional Thai food, but children asked for it. Faasai makes sushi its own way, for example seasoned with tom yam sauce. The rice gets the same care as in a Japanese restaurant: good quality, not too sweet and not too much of it.

If you want to taste Sarawut's favourite, order the panang curry as a plated dish. He says its flavours stay stronger on the plate than on the buffet. For more heat at the buffet, visit the spice table.

The buffet is served at lunchtime on weekdays in every restaurant, and in Kaleva all day, every day. Children eat for €1 per year of age. Tables can be booked by phone, and the food is also available for pickup and home delivery.

• Koskikatu 7, Tampere
• Hatanpään valtatie 26, Tampere
• Ilmarinkatu 49, Tampere (Kaleva)
• Koulutie 6, Pirkkala

Opening hours, buffet and menu →

Advice for other business owners

Sarawut's advice is to think first about where your customers live and how they get around. Faasai grew when the restaurant moved out to the suburbs, onto public transport routes and next to free parking.

Siriwan Wong-Udommongkhon has advice for anyone who doubts the buffet. The food has to turn over quickly, and the warming trays must not be too hot, so the food does not overcook.

"If another restaurant feels that buffet food doesn't stay good, the problem is the food or the turnover, not the buffet."

Siriwan Wong-Udommongkhon | Faasai

Where Solmio fits in

• Solmio-kassa in all four restaurants
• Buffet, à la carte and takeaway sales on the same till
• Kitchen communication for à la carte dishes
• Reporting per restaurant and for the whole chain
• Remote device management

Is your restaurant growing to more locations? Let's look together at what the solution could look like. Book a meeting →

POS system for restaurants