Restaurant Staff Training: Grow Your Team with Benchmarking Meals
When people think of restaurant staff training, they often prioritize service manuals or menu education. At Goldtuna, we add one more essential practice to this routine.
Every month, we use our lunch break to visit other restaurants with our staff. We do this to experience the food, service, and atmosphere from the customer's perspective, rather than as providers.
To truly understand the customer's perspective, staff members must occasionally become customers themselves.
A commemorative photo of the Goldtuna team during a benchmarking session at a restaurant in Lotte World Mall, Jamsil. We organize these monthly lunch tours to experience the industry firsthand.
The Difference Between Knowing and Experiencing
In a restaurant, we walk through the same space dozens of times a day. Traffic flows and facilities that feel familiar to staff can look completely different to a first-time visitor.
When we visit another restaurant, our role shifts. We are no longer the ones serving the food; we are the ones waiting for it.
We look at the menu, place an order, and wait at the table. We listen to staff explanations and search for the restroom.
This allows us to re-experience a restaurant through a customer’s eyes, a view we might miss as providers.
This is why Goldtuna’s benchmarking sessions serve a different purpose than a typical staff dinner. It is a time to observe how other establishments welcome guests and manage their space and cuisine.
Goldtuna’s Signature Platter - Main Course Standard
“What If We Changed This?”
A restaurant’s competitiveness cannot be defined by food alone. Seating, table spacing, lighting, utensils, restroom cleanliness, staff movement, and communication all combine to form the dining experience.
Recently, we visited a restaurant in Jamsil Lotte World Mall where the meal was priced at 68,000 KRW per person.
While the food was somewhat underwhelming by Goldtuna’s standards, the space and facilities were quite impressive.
After the meal, our evaluation was simple:
“The food was a bit disappointing, but the facilities and chairs were excellent.
If we change the chairs at Table 5 in our shop...”
Benchmarking isn’t about copying everything. It’s about analyzing what others do better—whether it’s the food or the space—and identifying specific areas for improvement.
Bluefin Tuna Fin Meat (Kama-toro)
R&D: Learning Through Monthly Lunch Tours
When you stay inside your own shop for too long, "familiarity" becomes your only standard. By sitting in another restaurant's chairs and observing how they set the table, you start to notice the things you’ve been taking for granted.
Goldtuna Bangi-dong has been our home for a long time. While we can constantly evolve our food and service, buildings and facilities have physical limitations.
However, we shouldn't stop comparing ourselves just because of older facilities. The goal of benchmarking is to learn from new spaces and find what we can change within our current conditions.
Southern Bluefin Tuna Collar Belly (Kama-toro)
Staff Training is About Creating Culture
It is difficult to create a manual for every possible situation in the food industry. Every customer has different expectations, and the same food can be perceived differently based on price, space, and service.
Therefore, staff training needs more than just instructions; it requires a standard for the staff to judge for themselves what makes a "good restaurant."
Paying for a meal at another restaurant is one of the best ways to build that standard.
This is why Goldtuna conducts monthly benchmarking tours. The goal isn't just to find good things elsewhere; it's to look back at our own shop with a fresh perspective on what to improve.
Bluefin Tuna Belly Button (Heso-toro)
More About the Goldtuna Story
A 12-Year Record of Goldtuna: Operating by System, Not Just Instinct
The Goldtuna brand story documents our transition from a small local eatery to a premium tuna specialist, the development of our signature serving trays, and our monthly staff benchmarking tours as part of our core operations.
While this post highlights one specific lunch tour, the document below shows how these activities are integral to Goldtuna’s long-term philosophy.
Actual Customer Reviews Highlighting Our Friendly Service
The success of staff training is best measured through customer experiences rather than the training hours themselves.
Here is a review from a guest at our Bangi-dong branch mentioning both the taste of the tuna and the kindness of our staff.
Goldtuna operates branches in Bangi-dong and Sinsa-dong.
Our courses are meticulously designed to provide a comprehensive dining experience, featuring tuna sashimi, sushi, ankimo (monkfish liver), grilled mero (Patagonian toothfish), tteok-galbi (grilled short rib patties), tuna karaage, cream shrimp, udon, and dessert.
We believe that staff interaction, space, service, and operation methods are just as important as the food itself in determining the quality of a restaurant. Our monthly benchmarking sessions are a testament to this commitment to excellence.
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