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Smashburger president reveals 5 ways to become 'pandemic positive'

Carl Bachmann, president at Smashburger, discusses how his strategic five-point plan helped the brand increase sales, despite years of declining revenue.

Carl Bachmann, president at Smashburger, discusses how his strategic five-point plan helped the brand increase sales, despite years of declining revenue. provided

November 23, 2020

By Carl Bachmann, president, Smashburger

While the global pandemic has created significant challenges for the restaurant industry, at Smashburger we've been fortunate enough to exceed growth plans as a result of the company's long-term emphasis on planning and flexibility. Once the pandemic hit, we coined the phrase "pandemic positive" which was reflected in our culture but also in sales.

During that time, our main goal was to create comfort in uncomfortable times, and we did this through a strategic plan I put together with our parent company, Jollibee Foods Corp., when we were acquired in 2018. This five-point plan was my way of creating a go-forward turnaround plan for the brand when I became president at Smashburger, with a focus on bringing the company back to its founder-created vision: to be the best burger brand.

Despite years of declining revenue, Smashburger will end the year with a positive YTD sales increase, with positive double-digit sales for eight months straight. The plan also prepped us for all the uncertainty Smashburger faced amid a struggling time for the fast-casual sector. Here are the key elements of the strategic plan that helped us thrive as we adapted to COVID-19.

Smashburger's new units will have a modern look and feel, with an emphasis on food cues by creating an open kitchen concept so customers can see the culinary process. Provided.

1. Team Infrastructure
When we were first acquired by Jollibee, the company taught us about the importance of infrastructure, process and system. I knew that to ensure the restaurant could succeed moving forward we needed to have the correct team in place to help rebuild the brand. Therefore, I made building a world-class team with the right talent in all departments a priority for the company. Smashburger's resilience through this crisis is in part a direct result of having the precise team infrastructure in place to adapt accordingly.

2. Taste
At Smashburger, the most important aspect of our brand is the taste and quality of our products. We built our company around being a chef-inspired brand with the best tasting and highest caliber products. Despite the uncertainty around COVID-19, at Smashburger we took an aggressive approach to leaning into menu innovation. When many restaurants were limiting their menus and not releasing new products, Smashburger moved forward with the launch of a new premium blockbuster product, the Bacon Brisket Burger. We offered a BOGO $1 promotion in May to kick off the launch, which generated one of the highest single-day promotion sales numbers this year, making up seven% of total sales when it was first released.

3. Redefining our portfolio
The biggest challenge we faced during the pandemic was pivoting from a primarily dine-in model to catering to an increased demand in takeout offerings. We quickly expanded our delivery offerings and implemented curbside pickup in over 70 locations. Fortunately, with 30 years of experience in the industry, I already had digital transformation initiatives in progress, but COVID-19 accelerated our efforts to make Smashburger accessible to our guests digitally. This contributed to a 436.7%increase in digital and call-in orders, which has given us the opportunity to build new restaurant prototypes that are more conducive to a digital transformation.

Our goal is to redefine our portfolio and make strategic real estate decisions utilizing a hub and spoke approach. We are working to open restaurants in high volume foot traffic areas, with a focus on suburb locations. I believe that even post pandemic a lot of people will change their daily habits and be closer to home, making strong suburban retail with high residential populations an optimum area for us.

Seeking to open over 40 new Smashburger locations in 2021, our new restaurant prototypes have a modern look and feel, with an emphasis on food cues by creating an open kitchen concept so customers can see the culinary process. This new restaurant model will offer a more approachable dining experience through drive-up or virtual drive-thru, new innovative cubby systems that will help create a fully contactless experience and socially distanced outside setting.

4. Food quality, service, cleanliness and condition of restaurants
Adopting this FSC approach from Jollibee, this concept has become a cultural drive for the business and how we operate. With safety becoming a major concern when it comes to dining out, it's essential that Smashburger is transparent with how we clean our restaurants and how we are keeping people safe. We started by changing the perception around cleanliness. We knew in order to show our guests how important safety and cleanliness are to us we needed to change this stigma. We adopted this "clean must be seen" mentality where we sanitize our restaurants every 15 minutes, so our guests can feel confident when dining with Smashburger that their safety is the utmost priority.

5. Brand positioning
From a positioning standpoint, Smashburger has always been a culinary food-focused brand, so we wanted to create an elevated experience and redefine Smashburger's place in the category through our obsession with the culinary process of burger creation.

As part of our objective to transition the brand away from the fast-food category, we wanted to change the look and feel of the brand by removing reds and yellows from our logo and marketing materials. Earlier this year, we launched our "Smashed It" rebranding campaign, which was implemented throughout our restaurant redesigns, brand image and marketing campaigns. We are also in the process of revamping Smashburger's website and app to create a more user-friendly experience and more predominant social media presence.

In closing, as a result of Smashburger's aggressive approach to moving forward and innovating on all these key strategic initiatives, during a time when many restaurants were slowing down, we were able to not only increase sales but substantially exceed growth plans. We look forward to the future and to continue to provide comfort to our guests during these trying times.

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