• Journal of the Korean Society of Food Culture
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.211-219
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• 2011

To examine the key success factors for long-lasting restaurants, we visited 10 restaurants with 30 or more than 30 years of tradition, located in Seoul and Gyeonggi-do districts, to research these restaurant menus and customer characteristics by observation and interview. The results were analyzed using descriptive statistics. The outstanding feature noted was that each and every restaurant had its own simple and specialized menu. We found that this feature created a virtuous circle that reinforced itself through a positive feedback loop. The simple and specialized menu increased both the cooking efficiency and food quality while it reduced both food and labor costs, this enabled the customers to eat at an affordable price and have generous servings. This lead to customer satisfaction and revisits to the restaurant, which triggered word-of-mouth referral and expansion of their customer base. This in turn created higher operating profit margins that could be reinvested in the business. The secret recipes for cooking, invented by their founders, were passed on from generation to generation. Their customer base included customers of all ages from children to senior people. And their regular customers consisted of neighboring office workers and families traveling from a long distance. We hope that our findings on long-lasting restaurants, especially of the virtuous cycle created due to the simple and specialized menus with secret recipes, will contribute to the development of Korean style long-lasting restaurant model.