LongHorn Steakhouse's Novel Solution For Training Grill Masters Without Wasting Steak

LongHorn Steakhouse is having a moment. The Americana-soaked, full-service steak chain is riding high with 85% customer satisfaction and sales way up in 2025. There are a few reasons for this outlier success which bucks broader market trends that have seen many restaurants closing locations over the last few years – large portions, low prices that don't depend on promotions, and the idea of affordable luxury are all part of the magic mix. But LongHorn Steakhouse has something else going for it; it's the restaurant's staff that CEO Rick Cardenas thinks give it an edge. According to NRN, at this year's IRC conference Cardenas talked about quality and value as expected, but also noted that LongHorn has "invested in the team which now has record low turnover and a great experience." Part of this investment has been in training, including collaborating with the digital studio Designing Digitally to build an innovative new training tool for kitchen team onboarding.

LongHorn's new kitchen staff have always received a lot of instruction before they become Grill Masters and take charge of their restaurant's share of the millions of steaks LongHorn sells annually. LongHorn has remained committed to this despite steep rises in beef prices and the obvious issues with space in tight kitchens, issues that are solved by starting staff training on the C.A.R.E. Challenge, which Designing Digitally describes as "a custom-built serious game that simulates the experience of being in a LongHorn kitchen."

LongHorn wasn't just thinking about the bottom line when they commissioned an app to help with the kitchen onboarding process. The learning curve for a Grill Master can be steep and building confidence is just as important as drilling hard skills. Sure, cooking a five-star worthy steak can seem simple if you're grilling at home for yourself. In the LongHorn kitchen, however, cooks need to understand multiple cuts of meat, deal with the temperatures needed for each, adhere to professional quality standards, and juggle well-done, medium, and practically-mooing orders all at once. When describing the challenge faced for designing the game, Designing Digitally says, "There was a need for hands-on practice that not only taught the correct methods but also allowed employees to build confidence through repetition."

The genius part of LongHorn's 'serious game' training tool is that it really looks and feels like a mobile game. It features a simple, fixed view of a kitchen with grill tools in easy reach. The app works on tablets and phones with visuals that are clear enough for users to learn key indicators like grill marks and color changes as they play. Although it feels like killing time with a kitchen game, the randomly generated menus and increasing difficulty make it an effective training tool while score cards with improvement notes let both trainees and managers keep up with progress and understand weak points. It's not about immediate perfection, either. As Designing Digitally put it, "The structure of the simulation allows learners to make mistakes, learn from them, and improve in a controlled environment."

LongHorn's kitchen training tool is just one of many in its arsenal when it comes to staffing and retention. The brand worked with Designing Digitally before when it created a similar serious game for its restaurant managers, so building one for Grill Master training was the second step in the training revamp. The business also embarked on a determined hiring push post-Covid and began an ongoing shift in focus which centers quality and customer experience. This likely improved the work environment of front-of-house staff, who were now serving happy customers with extra care. Getting down to brass tacks, LongHorn Steakhouse and other Darden-owned restaurants offers its hourly-paid staff base benefits like access to health insurance from the beginning of their tenure, a 401k, and quarterly bonuses.

On top of all this, Cardenas, the steakhouse's CEO, recognizes that staff on the ground are just as important as overarching, business-wide policies. Quoted in FSR Magazine, he said, "It's that management team that makes the difference. And we believe we have the best management teams in the industry and the best general managers in the business." It might seem like simple praise, but this bottom-up attitude to running a business is by no means a given in chain restaurants. If LongHorn continues to see success (and relatively low staff turnover) as rivals like Outback Steakhouse shutter locations, perhaps it will become industry standard.