Once you get that first restaurant up and running, and staff know exactly what to do, it’s easy to go lax on your training program, the one you spent months developing. But that’s a precarious position because how will you scale up with success when it’s time to open additional units or brand-new concepts? You’ll need a concise training program to be consistent across locations, one that all managers are skilled in and can easily filter down to employees.
“Typically, a training program is by the seat of the pants. Somebody quits. Then it’s a matter of reacting. You can’t react with training,” said Blue Orbit Restaurant Consulting CEO Ray Camillo.
Because the opening team eventually moves on, and new employees join, training should be ongoing. “You invest so much in the opening training because you have the time and there’s no guests in house,” said Andres Clavero, general manager and partner at the Michelin-starred Galit in Chicago, and also Café Yaya next door. “But when you add on people, after the craziness of being open, you often leave things out. It’s not as in-depth. It’s almost a discredit to those who join after.”
Before launching into the nitty-gritty of what the training entails, make sure you’re crystal clear on your hospitality group’s ethics and values, so they can be woven throughout. More than teaching day-to-day tasks, it should ask employees to embrace the culture. “Culture is the biggest [topic] we focus on [and] making sure it’s a great fit for everyone,” said Clavero.
“It really starts with writing down the reasons that we use specific producers and products and the stories of why these dishes are on the menu,” said Rob Mosher, co-owner of Monteverde in Chicago—and, by early 2027, Trattoria Lo So, also in Chicago. “Then the wait staff has all of this at their fingertips. It makes for a more natural conversation with the guest. That’s at the high level.”
If creating a mission statement makes you panic, don’t overthink it. This isn’t like a multi-page business plan. “You need to identify it and be able to write it down,” suggested Stephen Kaplan, co-owner and chief operating officer of several Rumi’s Kitchen locations across the U.S. “Any successful business has core values. What is the principle we will not compromise on? When the owner or founder is no longer (at the restaurant) day-to-day, it is the core values, the mission and the purpose that the team has.”
Not sure where to begin with creating a training program? First identify who among your staff will lead the training program. “It has to be someone who’s actually good at talking to people,” said Camillo. “They’re patient. They have a vested interested in their coworkers being good stewards of the brand. That doesn’t just happen by grabbing the best egg in the house.”
If you want to adopt a team approach, rotate those leaders. “Changing the voice is something we try to focus on,” said Clavero. “We have our manager meeting and decide, ‘Who’s going to deliver this message?’ so it’s not always coming from the same person.”
One impulse is to hire a consultant to handle your training program, so you can be hands-off and focus on your restaurant, but that could backfire as “consulting firms try to cater to ‘one size fits all,’” said Clavero. Kaplan agrees. “Implementing a training program is a lot easier when the person who’s designing it is working in that restaurant every day,” he said.
After all, you know your restaurant best. By pairing that knowledge with technology tools that do the heavy lifting—so everyone’s organized and on the same page—the process will be more relatable to employees. Gone are the days of sending employees home with a stack of papers. “They sit on the backseat of someone’s car,” said Camillo. “They never use them again and they collect dust.”
That said, if you have younger people on your staff, the option to complete training online may be welcomed. “This generation are used to doing something on their phone,” said Kaplan. “It’s much easier for them. But then the flip side of that is because of how digital the world has gone, it’s still making sure you’re doing things the old-fashioned way, like the mock service.” At Rumi’s Kitchen, all positions take a written electronic exam followed by mock service with a general manager or someone else at a higher level. “That is in case something got missed,” said Kaplan. “We make sure that before they go on the floor interacting with the guests, we are able to catch that.”
Similarly, Mosher organizes weekly wine tastings with quizzes in a group setting, where answers are read back. “If people aren’t scoring well, then we talk with them. The importance of ongoing training is really important and it doesn’t stop after employees go through the training,” he said.
Learning can be virtual but there should be in-person follow-ups to ensure the information was retained and understood. Face-to-face communication is important for conveying updates to the menu, such as taking time during a shift meeting to introduce new menu items to cooks, taste those new items as a group, and maybe take a quiz on wine varietals. “There’s no system or AI that’s going to solve that,” said Camillo.
But there are tech tools that work well, especially during operating hours when employees need quick answers. For example, to ensure food prep is consistent, Kona Grill, said Camillo, has a QR code employees can access from their phone, with tips on how to make and plate each dish, along with a photo of what the finished product should look like. Clavero likes Trello because you can create digital cards for different trainings, and then correlate to where people are in the training process.
A top concern for restaurateurs and bar owners is how much a training program will cost. The short answer is “It depends.” Will you hire an outside consultant or keep it in-house? What technology tools will you use? The point is that you have a program and that it’s consistent across your locations.
If the company’s small enough, “just get something written down so there’s some structure to it,” said Kaplan. “At least it gives you a starting point. You can add to it as you go.”
This could even mean developing checklists, for every role, “so everyone has a clear understanding of what they need to do and [it can] be checked off by a manager,” said Mosher. “The manager then tests that knowledge.”
“If there’s something you know that you do every day, make sure you write it down,” Clavero often tells employees. “The next person here needs to know exactly what we’re doing. God forbid someone happens to you today. If someone comes in tomorrow, will they have a general idea of what needs to be done?” Along those lines, every station displays a photo of what a dish is supposed to look like.
A common misnomer is that a training program is only about coaching someone in their job role. Many restaurants opt to, in an employee’s first few weeks, have them instead rotate through various positions—in both the front and the back of the house—to better understand how everyone contributes to the greater good.
Training can also be outside of the bar or restaurant, for a fun field trip. Clavero arranges site visits to vendors such as local farms, wineries in Michigan, local coffee roasters and distilleries, and a local urban mushroom farm, “to make sure everyone gets the same love from the training before, during and after opening,” he said.
Not having a training program can have a trickle-down effect that unfortunately chips away at customer loyalty. If an employee is frazzled or incompetent, that directly impacts the guest experience, which subsequently gets in the way of your dream to scale up because you are now at risk of losing a customer.
“There’s a cost to it and a heartache to it because you have to be on top of your management team to make sure they support it,” said Kaplan about the importance of having a solid staff-training program. “If we’re talking about multi-unit restaurants, the only way to do it is through very structured training program.”