{"id":55038,"date":"2025-10-03T09:04:44","date_gmt":"2025-10-02T23:04:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bidfood.com.au\/?p=55038"},"modified":"2025-10-09T09:09:34","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T23:09:34","slug":"good-food-and-old-fashioned-service-never-goes-out-of-style","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bidfood.com.au\/blog\/good-food-and-old-fashioned-service-never-goes-out-of-style\/","title":{"rendered":"Good food and old-fashion service never go out of style – Golden Chicken Urangan"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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As Bidfood celebrates 30 years in Australian foodservice, we sat down with some of our customers who have shared the journey with us to uncover the secrets behind their success, hear about their experiences over the decades and meet the people who have helped shape foodservice in Australia.\n\n\n<\/h3>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Golden Chicken was founded in Hervey Bay in 1986 by brothers Simon and Diploma. Tim and Tracy Tester now own and operate the Urangan store, continuing the tradition of quality food and great service that Golden Chicken is known for. Text Here<\/p>

At 9:30 on a Thursday morning, you\u2019ll find Tracy Tester doing what she\u2019s done most mornings for the past three decades \u2013 getting prepped for the day ahead.<\/p>

\u201cI\u2019m slicing tomatoes right now, getting the cabinet ready for service,\u201d she says, attentive to the conversation but with one ear and one eye tuned to everything around her. \u201cNext, we\u2019ll move on to crumbing the schnitzels.\u201d<\/p>

Over 30 years in business, Tim and Tracy Tester have covered countless shifts, employed hundreds of people and created relationships that have lasted decades. And along the way, they\u2019ve built a customer base so loyal that many have followed them across different sites.<\/p>

\u201cThere\u2019s never a dull moment,\u201d says Tracy. \u201cI quite enjoy it!\u201d<\/p>

Tracy began her career at Golden Chicken in 1995 working as a cashier. \u201cI originally wanted to be a chef but the hours didn\u2019t suit me when I was young. I was talking about this with the owners at the time and they told me they didn\u2019t want me to go \u2013 so they offered me a little bit more money and I said, \u2018Right-o!\u2019 I graduated grade 12 and pretty much started full-time straight after that.\u201d<\/p>

As to what has kept her in the industry so long, she laughs. \u201cI\u2019m not the kind of person to sit down. I was never going to be an office worker or anything like that.\u201d<\/p>

For any business to last 30 years is a huge achievement. But for a hospitality operation and its operators to see out three decades takes grit and determination. And, according to Tracy, good food.<\/p>

\u201cEverything is cooked to order. I think that\u2019s the secret. We don\u2019t have anything sitting ready apart from our barbecue chickens, which take two hours to cook. When you serve a consistent product, people know they can always come in for a good feed.\u201d<\/p>

And while Tracy doesn\u2019t like to think of what they cook as strictly \u2018takeaway\u2019 she knows their food fits the Australian lifestyle. \u201cI think Australians are quite busy. We like our lifestyle and being able to go and do what we want, when we want. And, yeah, takeaway is a nice quick option \u2013 though we like to think of our food as fresher. You can grab your chicken and veggies for dinner. And a lot of our customers tell us they don\u2019t feel bad eating it every day of the week.\u201d<\/p>

It\u2019s clear it\u2019s not just the good food that keeps the customers coming back. It\u2019s the way they\u2019re made feel when they walk through the door.<\/p>

\u201cWe have so many regulars. Some come in every single day, Monday to Friday,\u201d Tracy says. She laughs as she recalls one \u201cbloke\u201d who stops by every morning for a quarter chicken and chips for breakfast.<\/p>

\u201cSomething we pride ourselves on here is being able to communicate with customers and have a conversation. A lot of our clientele are elderly and they\u2019re always up for a chat. We make sure they have a pleasant experience when they come in.\u201d<\/p>

Talking to customers wasn\u2019t always something that came easy to Tracy, who laughs as she thinks what advice she would give her younger self. \u201cWhen I first started, funnily enough, I was a very shy person. I was a bit of an introvert and didn\u2019t like talking too much to people. Now, I\u2019m happy to chat with anyone who\u2019ll give me the time of day. It\u2019s been a real learning experience. I\u2019d tell my younger self that people aren\u2019t actually that scary.\u201d<\/p>

Over the years, Tracy has seen many changes, but there are two that stand out more than others \u2013 the way to approach hiring and training staff, and catering for dietary requirements.<\/p>

\u201cStaff have changed over the years. With social media, everyone seems to be doing things online \u2013 not so much face-to-face. It\u2019s getting trickier.\u201d<\/p>

But even in a digital age, Tracy believes the heart of hospitality is still face-to-face. \u201cWe still like applicants to come in-store to apply because most of the time they\u2019re going for a customer service position. We want to see how they present, what their service skills are like and how they hold a conversation.\u201d<\/p>

But the biggest change, Tracy says, has been in consumer behaviour \u2013 particularly around dietary requirements. \u201cThirty years ago, we basically had roast chicken. It was roast chicken and chips or roast chicken and veggies. Or a roast chicken roll. Now there\u2019s all the combos and meals and bits and pieces we do. These days, everyone wants little add-ons.\u201d<\/p>

That shift has changed the way the business runs behind the counter too. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot more knowledge our cashiers need to have. Customers ask questions and we\u2019ve got to have all the answers. So, we\u2019ve put together little cheat sheets out the back for them to read up on and be ready. But yes, definitely \u2013 it\u2019s changed a lot.\u201d<\/p>

When it comes to the big question, though \u2013 what it\u2019s like to work with your husband as your business partner \u2013 Tracy tackles it with the same enthusiasm she brings to the rest of the business. \u201cOh, that\u2019s very interesting some days!\u201d she laughs. \u201cWe have our children working here now as well, so it\u2019s a real family affair.\u201d It was, in fact, at Golden Chicken where Tim and Tracy first met. \u201cYes, we were working at the same store!\u201d<\/p>

But just as they\u2019ve learned to solve business obstacles with a smile, they\u2019ve also learned how to navigate the partnership. \u201cWe figured out what works. And yeah, it\u2019s hard not to talk about work at home because generally that\u2019s what our life revolves around, but we make sure we get away and switch off quite regularly.\u201d<\/p>

Over three decades, Golden Chicken has weathered plenty of changes \u2013 from shifting consumer tastes to the challenges of running a family business \u2013 yet Tim and Tracy have stayed true to what matters. Loyal regulars have stayed with them through the years, drawn by the same consistency and care that has defined the business from the start.<\/p>

For Tracy, the secret isn\u2019t complicated. It\u2019s hard work, pride in what they\u2019ve built and service with a smile. \u201cHonestly, I do enjoy what I do. I have a lot of pride in what we\u2019ve built here. We\u2019ve worked very hard to get it to where it is \u2013 and service will always be at the heart of it.\u201d<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t

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Golden Chicken was founded in Hervey Bay in 1986 by brothers Simon and Diploma. Tim and Tracy Tester now own and operate the Urangan store, continuing the tradition of quality food and great service that Golden Chicken is known for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":55041,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"yes","footnotes":""},"categories":[14,13],"tags":[120,115],"class_list":["post-55038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-reports","category-industry","tag-foodservice","tag-industry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bidfood.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bidfood.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bidfood.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bidfood.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bidfood.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55038"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.bidfood.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55131,"href":"https:\/\/www.bidfood.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55038\/revisions\/55131"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bidfood.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bidfood.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bidfood.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bidfood.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}