Duean Nitra has been selling her famous pork and noodles soup for thirty years, but she’s never seen anything like the Covid-19 pandemic.
Better known as Ya Duean, (Grandma Duean) she has never raised the price of her tender pork, pork balls, crispy shrimp and bone-in broth from its current 20 baht. Before the pandemic, she sold hundreds of bowls a week. What she lost in margins she made up for in volume.
These days, however, there is no volume. Sales have fallen to less than 30 percent of pre-pandemic times. But Duean said she not only won’t raise prices, she’s now giving the soup away free for Pattaya’s most vulnerable.
Her food shop on Soi Khao Talo 3 in Daraphan Village 5 offers free bowls of pork noodles each Sunday to pregnant women, kindergarteners, the disabled and the truly needy.
