Getting creative with restaurant staff training

In this two-part series, readers will learn that training restaurant workers doesn't have to be boring or time consuming. In part-one, we look at Burger King's "training videos" with Snoop Dogg and Charo. In part-two, we go over the lessons learned from BK's videos and how bars and restaurants can improve their own internal staff training.

Part 1: Snoop Dogg trains Burger King employees to make hot dogs
Part 2: Four lessons from the Snoop Dogg's restaurant training videos

"We grillin' this dog my way—bikinis, martinis, zucchinis, yeah, you know the rest."

One of the hardest things for restaurant operators to do is train their employees and do it in a way that's effective, interesting and informative. Burger King thinks it's found a way of reaching it's employees -- Snoop Dogg.

It's an interesting idea to use celebrities in training videos. The substance of the video isn't any different than it would have been without Snoop Dogg, but the tone of it definitely is. It kept our attention, if for no other reason than to see what might happen next.

It also reminds us a lot of the Simpson's "You might remember me from such films as..." running joke.

In seriousness, the whole training video is pretty refreshing. It's not stale or what you expect from a training video or even what you'd even expect from a celeb-lead training video. It's got personality and humor. It's fun. It's a lot like Virgin Atlantic's flight safety musical video (aka a better produced version of what the MBTA tried to do in Boston).

The training video is also short as hell. The entire video is just 1:19 and the actual training portion of the video is just 20 seconds long. Then again, how hard is it to make a hot dog? Props to BK for making a "how to make a hot dog" video interesting to watch.

They also did a version with Charo which is in half-English, half-Spanish.

Guess you can say BK employees are having training done their way.