Mr. Jang Bae Jang is an owner of the Korean & Japanese restaurant, “Minato” and he is a head cook in the kitchen at the same time. We had got a chance to visit his restaurant and interview him. Minato is located along
Astoria street, behind University of Asia and the Pacific in Ortigas. If you walk a little along the street, you can find out Korean signs hanging everywhere down to the street. Yes, this is the area where Korean stores are crowded and Minato is situated in halfway of the street. When we entered the restaurant and explained that we were researching about a restaurant, he warmly welcomed us and willingly accepted our favor whether we could have interviewed him. So as soon as we got there, we were able to interview him.Mr. Jang has been in the Philippines for 5 years. He opened his restaurant last November 2004 after he had a careful study on the market for 6 months. He used to run a restaurant in Korea for 15 years already so he felt confident that he would run a successful restaurant in the Philippines also and his anticipation came true. Now a lot of customers are visiting his restaurant.
Actually this isn’t the first restaurant he had in the Philippines but the second. At first time, he used to run a Japanese restaurant in front of the SM megamall. It was Korean styled Japanese food restaurant but it wasn’t really successful. Learning from his failure, this time, he remodeled his restaurant into Korean & Japanese restaurant, offered not only Japanese food but also Korean food, the restaurant went successful. While he runs the restaurant, several communication errors as well as cultural differences and different behaviors happened between him and his employees that hindered him time to time from managing the restaurant well. One day, one of employees kept having an advanced salary. He felt displeasure about this until he finally found out that the employee’s family’s living was depending on the small amount of money he gave the employee in advance. The other day, he let the workers do some chores. He didn’t tell them detail how exactly they should work because he taught them last time and he expected them to do the work in such a way he taught. Later when he came back, he found out that there’s nothing done in a way he expected. He asked the workers and they said it was because they were not told of how exactly they should execute the work. So these were the traits that Filipino employees stacked to and it was interesting for him to know.
Since he has been running a restaurant for more than 15 years, the experience helped him a lot; it facilitated the restaurant’s growth. He gave us an advice at this point when he was talking; that one should choose the job that fits his/her major course. Since you already have a lot of experiences, you will have less chance to fail in what you are doing.
But his major, amazingly, was not the restaurant management when he went to college. He has been through architecture engineering course and, in fact, had worked in construction industry for 10 years. But he got injured—he hurt his back—and he couldn’t do a hard job anymore. Taking one of his friends’ persuasions, he finally came to work in restaurant industry.
Their target market is “International”, he says. People who visit his restaurant
are not only Korean but Chinese, Filipino, or Westerners, everyone. He aims for every nationality. Wherever you came from, your taste won’t be so different from the others. He emphasizes, “Your guests recognize good food. If you provide tasty food, the guests will come.” He put the taste of food in the first place among the other elements to be a good restaurant. And then there comes the mood of the restaurant and then the service because these will make the restaurant a want-to-visit-again restaurant. But after all, taste plays significant role in restaurant’s reputation.Pretty broad range of age level of visitor the restaurant has got. Actually you can say, all age without skipping a certain age group, from young people such as kids to old people like elderly can go to the restaurant and eat anytime. The restaurant opens until 10PM.
They are providing a table service. Guests enter and they will be assigned a table. They order from their table where they are sitting beside and servers will bring food to the table.
Now, training an employee is as important as you manage the restaurant well. Actually managing people well is the key to manage a successful restaurant. He teaches his employees that a sanitation & hygiene is the number one concern of them. He cannot emphasize it anymore. Keeping the restaurant clean and hygienic is just like you wash your face every morning when you wake up. Next, he wants the entire employee to smile to the guests all the time. It is important to look friendly and welcoming. And lastly he wants his employees to think always that everything should be done for guests. Whatever they want, you provide them immediately what they want. In addition, he requests everyone to be on time and less tardy. There are 18 employees at all, 12 working in the kitchen while 6 serving food.
Guests’ most favorite menu is Minato Jumuluk. It is like a beef barbeque and it is called Minato Jumuluk because it is their specialty. Moreover guests are also delighted with Sashimi that Mr. Jang cooks directly.
I like Bibimbab from their menu. It is rice mingled with vegetables, meat, and hot pepper paste. It tastes so nice because of fresh vegetables and hot pepper paste just makes it right for me who is nearly addicted to spicy food.
I enjoyed time with Mr. Jang, visiting his restaurant and having a talk with him. Aside from the fact that I now know about their food and their restaurant, the experience and the real time lesson that he could tell us made this research even more worthy. I thank him for his time with us, and I hope his best in his future restaurant operation.
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