Recently, the influential U.S. media “Observer” announced the “Night Life & Dining Power Index 2025.” It is an index that can look at global restaurant & hospitality industry leaders, and it is a list selected based on cultural influence and authentic hospitality capabilities as well as operational performance.
Park Jung-hyun and Park Jung-eun, who run “Atomix,” “Atoboy,” “Naro,” and “Seoul Salon,” were ranked No. 1 in hospitality, while Simon Kim, who runs “COTE” and “COQODAQ,” was ranked No. 5. They are all Korean restaurant entrepreneurs based in New York, who have placed Korean food and food culture on the international stage, including Korean barbecue and chicken.
What I want to highlight here is not the part that “promotes Korean food widely,” but the importance of “hospitality,” which can leave long memories and impressions to customers. Hospitality is often translated as “hospitality” in Korea. Most people feel unfamiliar with the word hospitality itself because it is not common and is a technical word mainly used by people in the hotel, restaurant, and convention industries.
However, if you think about it a little more broadly, hospitality is also a service that greets customers at department stores, accepts customers’ bags and coats at beauty salons, and dresses them in gowns. Customers who visit department stores come to buy products, but in fact, from the moment they park, they are guided by the clerk, and from the moment they try on their favorite products, to the moment they purchase and leave, an emotion arises that they can immerse themselves in the brand. The restaurant is looking for to eat delicious food, but if the clerk throws the menu or rude services are provided that seem to ignore the customer, no matter how delicious the food is, they do not want to come back. The process of creating such emotions is hospitality and nonverbal consideration.
In the food and beverage business, hospitality is a heart and language that welcomes customers through the window of food and space. When evaluating a restaurant or bar, ‘the taste and completeness of food’ is also important, but what emotions and memories customers can take from the space are also very important. When they arrive earlier than the reservation time, they leave good memories of respecting customers and consideration, including a glass of welcome champagne from Shilla Hotel’s Rayon, which is provided by the lounge, “Atomics,” which suggests tasting with salty Kisundo soy sauce in light broth considering foreign tastes, and lettering service from the fine dining restaurant “Sukmudang,” which is provided for customers who celebrate their birthdays, and birth wine made by sommeliers themselves.
Hospitality is not the ability to perform a checklist of service manuals, but rather the consideration that makes customers feel “I am being respected.” Even if you pour the same glass of water, the temperature of the experience varies depending on the speed and facial expressions of the other person, the atmosphere with the companion, and whether you add a word of hello. The important thing for the restaurant is not what they did, but what kind of emotional reaction the series of actions caused the customer. It refers to the ability to coordinate the customer’s rhythm, not excessive kindness, such as the timing of making eye contact just before the amount of wine runs out and suggesting a refill, and the adjustment to slow down the main course slightly when the conversation is in full swing.
The level of the restaurant goes up a notch in the question of ‘What emotions do we want to present to our customers today?’
SALLY LEE
US ASIA JOURNAL
