Asian CSR Awardee's recipe for success: Chowking fills its kitchens with stars

HIS pots and pans gleam, his ingredients sparkle. For chef Rommel J. Torres, running a tight ship isn't enough - it also has to be spotless. "We want our customers to see Chinese kitchens in a different light," says the 28-year-old Chowking head cook.

Seven years ago, he couldn't care much for food, service and cleanliness - three quality standards by which Chowking gauges the performance of cooks and crew. After high school, Torres became a warm body in a long assembly line in a Marikina shoe factory. The hours were long and dirt-cheap. He was just pushing 20 but already felt he was wasting away his youth.

In 1998, Torres joined the long queue of applicants at Chowking, hoping his good looks and sunny smile would land him on the frontline as a waiter. Instead, he was assigned to the kitchen, where he had to wash plates squeaky clean that he could see his good looks and sunny smile on them.

From bleed to breed

While Torres was polishing dishes, Chowking was starting to reel from the 1997 economic crisis. The quick-service Oriental restaurant was then raking in nearly P2 billion in annual sales, and had a network of 155 stores nationwide. But it was feeling the pinch of the sharp currency depreciation and losing market share fast.

In 2000, the company was acquired by Jollibee Foods Corporation and became part of the biggest restaurant chain in the country.

"We had 1,000 cooks, 500 store managers, and 300 support staff just waiting for their last payslip to be handed. They were already looking defeated on Day One," describes Raffy de la Rosa, then Chief Financial Officer of Jollibee. The finance man was eventually tapped to head Chowking.

Like Torres, Norberto S. Yuson, 32, was also washing dishes at Chowking when he heard the news. But when de la Rosa spoke in employee assemblies about his plans for the new Chowking, people like Yuson heaved a sigh of relief. "We had to bring back a sense of direction and hope. So we said, 'nobody would lose their job.' In fact, we will even hire more as we expand," de la Rosa says.

Under his helm, people had to change the way they view things in the new Chowking. Performance milestones would no longer be based on financial bottomlines, but on a customer satisfaction index. Chowking loosened up working relations and called its business units "teams", managers "coaches", and its people "team players". Outstanding employees were treated as "workplace heroes" and received medals on top of other incentives. Chowking also did not cut on investments. It instead poured more money into stores, support facilities, and training.

Cut above the rest

Its biggest challenge was training its cooks. The sheer number alone - about 1,000 - proved overwhelming for trainors.

"We realized there are many mistakes that could possibly happen as we serve thousands of customers each day, from Tuguegarao to Zamboanga," says de la Rosa. "We did what was needed. We set up the training kitchen, standardized the processes and selected the first set of trainors. The training and certification commenced."

Chowking's Training Department identified 20 skilled cooks from all units and trained them to be cook trainors. Manuals on cooking procedures were prepared. Chowking also invested more than P7 million in a modern and fully equipped Training Kitchen that simulates actual kitchen conditions in its stores. All restaurant units also started to fill up their minimum kitchen staffing requirements.

For dishwashers like Torres and Yuson, the training program afforded a chance to shine. "At the time, I wasn't too confident about my cooking skills. My wife or my mother-in-law would cook for me at home. But I thought, 'This is a new door of opportunities opening up.' I had to enter," says Yuson.

In the second quarter of 2000, all store cooks underwent a basic training program in batches of ten at Chowking's Training Center. The training program covered standard cooking procedures for Chowking products. Every cook must successfully pass a written test and conduct a cooking demonstration of all Chowking products to complete the program. By end-2000, the process was completed for all cooks in Chowking's 160 stores.

In the fourth quarter of 2000, Chowking started a Gold Certification process for all trained cooks, aptly called the "Go for Gold Program." Trained cooks were again called in by batches at the Training Center. They took a written test and conduct an actual cooking demonstration of Chowking's more than 40 products, under the supervision of Master Cook Trainors. Cooks who passed the test were given gold pins and gold certification. Hurdling the process becomes more difficult each year as Chowking introduces new food items that cooks have to master.

Subsequently, Chowking also introduced one- and two-star gold certifications - each level elevating the degree of skill and competency of the cooks.

Beyond flipping burgers

"Chinese cooking is a tedious process. It involves marinating, braising, steaming, sauteing, roasting, boiling, wok frying and many more. This is not easy work. We have to get master chefs to train our cooks," says de la Rosa.

The company's training and HR teams develop the program. Chowking's total investment in the program now exceeds P5 million. It has so far trained and gold-certified more than 2,600 cooks, 1,500 managers, and 15,000 crews deployed in its 375 restaurant units in the Philippines and overseas.

As proof that it doesn't rest on its laurels, Chowking continued to up the ante. In 2005, it launched the three-star gold certification program, which not only measures the knowledge of the cook, but also his skills as a trainor. Those who passed the certification process get their three-star certificate and are considered certified cook trainors. They can now conduct their own in-store training for new store cooks. With the three-star process, Chowking is able to easily roll out new products while maintaining food quality and consistency.

"The minimum wage index had risen by more than 20% over the last four years. But we have been able to keep our labor cost at almost constant base to sales. Our training and certification programs have raised our productivity," de la Rosa says.

In addition to enabling Chowking to pursue many market opportunities, the Gold Certification and star training programs have become a differentiating core competency for the company. Recently, the program won a Merit Award in the best workplace category of the 2006 Asian CSR Awards mounted by the Asian Institute of Management. More than 600 entries from 18 countries in the region vied for the much-coveted awards. Like Yuson and Torres, most Chowking cooks were just high school graduates who started out as dishwashers and kitchen helpers. The certification program enabled them to move up the ranks of regular cooks, assistant cooks, head cooks, and eventually, trainor cooks; some even become part of the store management team. Chowking cooks have also become lucrative targets for hiring by other companies for overseas jobs-in luxury liners, restaurants and hotels.