Our values at WILD
Good food. Good drinks. Good reasons.
It's good because we care.
At WILD, we believe a restaurant should first and foremost be a place where people have a genuinely great time. Creative spring rolls, excellent cocktails, a beautiful tropical garden and a friendly team who make you feel at home. That's why people should come to WILD, and that's exactly how we want it.
But we've always wanted the business behind that experience to mean something too. To create good jobs, offer some financial security to the people we work with, support our local community and reduce our impact on the environment.
We don't expect anyone to choose WILD out of charity or because we're trying to do the right thing. We want our guests to choose us because they love coming here. In fact, we believe happy guests and a successful business are what make everything else possible.
A few examples of what this means in practice
A business that grew with its values
Built step by step since 2018
We didn't start with all the benefits and initiatives we have today. We opened WILD Siem Reap in 2018 with two employees, and introduced them gradually, as the restaurants grew and we could afford to do more. Every returning guest, every recommendation and every busy evening has helped us create more jobs, improve working conditions and invest in the things we believe in.
We take care of our team. Our team takes care of our guests. And our guests make it possible for us to keep doing more.
People first, always
How we look after our team
Hospitality is hard work. We know how demanding a busy restaurant can be, and we believe that working in one should provide more than just a salary.
Today, our entire team is Cambodian, and nearly 80% of our employees have been with WILD for at least two years. Some of our longest-serving team members have been here since the very beginning. Others joined as interns, servers or junior cooks and have since become restaurant managers, kitchen captains and team leaders.
We're proud of that stability, particularly in an industry known for high staff turnover.
Fair pay, financial security and room to grow
We aim to offer salaries above local industry averages, alongside regular bonuses that allow our team to share in the restaurants' success. We provide meals, contribute to retirement benefits and offer financial support during important life events, whether that's a wedding, a birth or a difficult family situation.
We also believe that illness or having a baby shouldn't mean worrying about how to pay the bills. Our team members receive their full salary during covered sick leave. For maternity leave, mothers receive 120% of their usual monthly salary for each of the three months, equivalent to 3.6 months of salary in total. We adapt duties during pregnancy where possible and try to make returning to work as flexible as we can, particularly for new mothers who wish to continue breastfeeding.
We've also made a deliberate choice to employ more people than the bare minimum needed to run our restaurants. It costs more, but it allows us to keep working days shorter, make schedules more flexible and accommodate team members who are studying alongside their jobs.
None of this makes us perfect employers. We've learned a lot over the years, and managing 45 people is quite different from managing two. But we want the people who work at WILD to feel secure, respected and happy to come to work.
Keeping our whole team paid through Covid
The Covid years were a particularly difficult time for hospitality businesses in Cambodia. With tourism disappearing and our restaurants unable to generate enough revenue, we faced decisions we'd never imagined having to make.
For many of our team members, theirs was the last remaining job in the family. As relatives lost their livelihoods, their WILD salary had become the only income supporting the household.
We knew that losing that income would affect far more than just the person working for us. We decided to keep our entire team employed and continue paying salaries, using our personal savings, including money we'd set aside for retirement, to cover the costs.
It wasn't an easy decision financially, but the people working alongside us had helped build WILD. We couldn't imagine simply walking away from them when things became difficult.
We're fortunate that our guests eventually returned and allowed us to rebuild. And we're grateful that so many of our team members stayed with us through those years.
Less plastic, less waste, more common sense
Reducing plastic and waste
Running a restaurant makes you very aware of how much waste even small daily decisions can generate. A plastic bag or a disposable bottle might seem insignificant, but multiply that by dozens of customers and deliveries every day, and the numbers quickly become enormous.
Reducing that waste has been part of WILD since the beginning, even when the alternatives are more expensive or less convenient.
We don't sell single-use plastic water bottles. Instead, we provide drinking water free of charge to our guests. We don't use disposable plastic straws, and we've worked to eliminate single-use plastics from our restaurants, apart from limited food-safety necessities.
Our takeaway packaging is designed to avoid plastic and use as little material as practical. That includes refusing certain disposable coffee packaging options that are common in Cambodia, even if it occasionally disappoints customers.
We've also changed how we buy ingredients from local markets, introducing reusable baskets instead of collecting plastic bags with every purchase. This one change alone avoids several thousand plastic bags every year.
Used cooking oil has been collected for recycling since our first day of operation. Careful stock management, staff training and a menu designed around efficient ingredient use also help us limit food waste.
None of this is particularly glamorous. But we think it matters.
Rooted in Cambodia, connected to our community
Local suppliers and community support
Cambodia is where we've built WILD, and supporting the local economy is an important part of how we operate.
Approximately 80–90% of our purchases, by both value and volume, are sourced locally. We work with Cambodian suppliers, independent businesses and small traders, sometimes literally just a few doors down from our restaurants. We believe that the benefits of a successful local business should extend beyond its own walls.
We also support and collaborate with organisations working in Cambodia, including Pour un Sourire d'Enfant (PSE), whose students we've welcomed into our team, Heartprint, Wildlife Alliance and other community initiatives throughout the year.
Preserving a 1,000 m² garden in BKK1, Phnom Penh
Our tropical gardens are part of what makes WILD special, but the garden at WILD Phnom Penh means something more to us.
In BKK1, a neighbourhood where older buildings and green spaces are increasingly giving way to concrete developments and high-rise towers, we've chosen to preserve a large, leafy garden rather than turn the property into yet another construction site.
Our roughly 1,000 m² garden is a place to eat, drink, meet friends and escape the noise of the city for a while. We're happy that it also remains a pocket of greenery in a rapidly changing neighbourhood.
The value of preserving green and convivial spaces in Phnom Penh has also been explored in Carlo Santoro's urban research project, Projects for Phnom Penh: Urban Green Network Regeneration, in which WILD was featured.
Still growing, still learning
What we're still working on
When we opened our first restaurant, we had no idea WILD would become what it is today. We certainly didn't have a grand plan for every benefit, environmental initiative or community partnership we've introduced since.
Most of them came from fairly ordinary questions: Can we pay our team a little better? Can we make their working days easier? Do we really need all those plastic bags? Could we buy this from someone nearby instead?
As the business has grown, we've been able to answer more of those questions with action. There are still things we can improve, and we're sure we'll discover plenty more along the way.
We're proud of what we've built with our team, and grateful to the guests who make it possible every day.
So come for the spring rolls, enjoy a cocktail and spend a little longer in the garden. You don't have to think about any of this while you're here.
That's our job. Yours is to have a good time.
Wondering how it all started? Read our story.