Baemin Academy, a free training centre that Baedal Minjok operates for restaurant owners, has surpassed 350,000 cumulative students.

Woowahan Brothers, the operator of Baemin, said on Monday that cumulative enrolment at Baemin Academy totalled 357,174 as of late April. After reaching 300,000 cumulative students in April last year, about 50,000 more restaurant owners joined over the past year, making it a leading food service education institution.

Baemin Academy, which opened in 2014, has provided free programmes including essential business knowledge and theory, hands-on training and consulting to help restaurant owners strengthen competitiveness and grow. It runs offline spaces including a Seoul centre in Songpa-gu, Seoul, opened in 2017, and a Gyeonggi centre in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, opened in 2022. Since 2020, it has also offered online courses in parallel for owners outside the capital region who face constraints of time and distance. Courses are divided into in-person and live remote "application-based" classes and "video" classes available at any time, with a combined total of 4,485 sessions conducted across online and offline formats.

Recently, hands-on training aligned with advances in artificial intelligence technology has drawn a strong response. It is expanding courses in various ways that can be applied immediately in day-to-day operations, such as using AI to build a store website and make posters. Other highly preferred courses include sharing popular menu recipes and social media marketing strategies using short-form content. In the video course segment, basic law-focused classes such as labour, tax and practical approaches to commercial leases ranked among the most popular.

A community programme called Baemin Friends to share information among people in the same industry is also becoming more active, with the 11th cohort currently participating. The programme, which started in 2020, has drawn a cumulative 165 restaurant owners who share business know-how through volunteer activities, sales speech sessions and mentor-mentee activities.

Baemin Academy plans to improve how it delivers training to help owners grow more effectively. It will offer education to raise basic understanding of ingredients, teach the use of data such as market research and maximise menu completeness. It also plans to strengthen its AI education system while boosting access through a "Baemin Academy on the road" programme to revitalise regional education.

Kwon Yong-gyu (권용규), head of Woowahan Brothers' Baemin Academy office, said, "Baemin Academy was launched to raise the competitiveness of food service stores and provide practical help in running stores." He said, "We want to continue to be a reliable partner through programmes that strengthen the competitiveness of our food service partners and allow them to feel tangible results."