Togo’s New COO Reveals His Strategy to Position Company for Growth

I oversee company-owned and franchised restaurant operations, brand and operations training, operations services, concept innovation, new market and restaurant openings.

My job is to understand what their needs are and be a true partner. I look at us as one system sharing the same purpose. Our success comes from a strong commitment to each other and upholding Togo’s brand integrity. The community wins when I operate as a true partner. Our franchisees want labor efficient, quality and easy-to-execute programs and an effective way to train and develop people in this job market. They clearly want to have the best product and to encounter profitable growth.

My business model is a pyramid. The bottom of the pyramid is Great Operations. Great Operations means friendliness of staff, cleanliness of restaurants, quality of product, accuracy, speed with service, connecting with our guests and using technology to create win-win processes.

In order to achieve great operations, we need great people and the next level on that pyramid is People Development. I believe people development and profitability can become one. Most companies focus on profitability and feel people development is an additional step.

I believe that if we can create an environment in which our people can organically develop and grow, Our Company can grow due to our employees’ focus and efforts to enhance our guests’ experience. At the top of the pyramid is profitable growth; we need to generate enough excess capital to keep growing our business and enhancing our mission. But we can’t do this without Great People.

It’s a formula I call GP2. Great operations starts with “G.” People development starts with “P.”

Guest experience and profitability form the second G and P.

I try to keep my efforts focused on the components of the GP2 formula I just mentioned. At the end of each day, I ask myself if I made a difference in our guest experience or on our people development. The rest of the stuff I do is just additional fun. So I try to keep myself focused on those two.

• Conference calls
• Visiting stores
• Creating processes
• Being in touch with GMs, employees, franchisees, and business partners
• Continuous learning

We are focusing on evaluating the pay first method of operations that we’ve been testing. From April to July, we tested the pay first model at our corporate location in San Pedro. In August and September, we are testing it in select stores. From October to December, we are going to evaluate the test results. If everything goes well, we plan to roll out the pay first system-wide in 2018.

• Guests pay first
• Sandwich assembly into four stations
• Improved speed and consistency
• Simplified employee’s training

We also created two cashier stations to take care of our guests in a much improved speed with service. Guests quickly adapted to the system, and we saw the outcomes we hoped for.

We are also testing point-of-sale improvements. As guests place orders, they are printed out in the sandwich making station. If you order a sandwich and salad at the same time, tickets go to two different assembly stations, and the system recognizes they are part of one order.

Same store sales increased 5% based on these three weeks. We are still accumulating more data to increase our learning. So far the results are encouraging, and we are happy with it.

• High quality visual impact of our new menu boards
• Simplified for our guests to order
• Improved panels with different protein selections, farm fresh greens and specials
• Highlighting our special, like right now it highlights our improved quality and quantity of oven roasted deli style turkey sandwiches

The sandwich business is around $22 billion in the US. Our sandwich product is the best quality. Our bread is much larger, artisan, baked fresh daily and four inches wide versus two to three inches among our competitors. People call our sandwiches “meaty.” The other day, I was looking at competitors, the amount of meat we use in a six inch sandwich is more than what some of our competitors use in a larger sandwich. In short, we are well positioned!

We are testing several initiatives right now to enhance our offsite sales capability via online ordering and catering. Improving the way catering is handled could expand our franchisees’ business from 7 days a week to 8 or 9 days, as they can do equal to a day or two of store line business through catering orders.

• Online ordering
• Catering
• Door Dash, Grubhub, ezCater
• Simplifying large office lunch orders

I want to be part of the community, to be a good listener and to make sure I shake every hand. I want to touch base with all our franchises and really be open to what they have to say. I’m also looking forward to a hands-on demonstration of the pay first model we’re testing. We really believe pay first is going to impact our guests’ experience and aim to show it through this simulation hands on practice with franchisees and the corporate team.