A View From The Top

Mooyah back on top after drastic sales loss

Mooyah President Tony Darden talks about how the chain is thriving depsite losing 40% of sales at the start of COVID-19.

Mooyah President Tony Darden

December 18, 2020

By Tony Darden, president, Mooyah

Our "better-burger" concept didn't just survive the pandemic, it tightened its belt, switched up its offerings and actually grew business and opened stores without layoffs. The secret was corporate support of franchise owners.

In my 25 years in the restaurant industry, nothing had prepared me for a global pandemic and nationwide economic crisis, but when the time came, I found myself focused on a single question: how can we get Mooyah's franchise owners on the other side of this pandemic in the best cash position possible?

At the onset of the pandemic in March, we lost 40% of our business off the bat. COVID-19 rules and regulations were changing day by day. Our franchise owners across the country were worried, and no one knew if dining rooms would stay closed for 10 days or 10 months. Over the next few months, 40 million Americans lost their jobs, with the restaurant industry among the first and hardest hit.

For leadership, the pandemic became about assessing the situation and the needs of our franchise owners. First and foremost, we said we weren't laying anybody off. Our job, as we saw it, was to support our franchise owners, their families, their team members and our guests through difficult times.

Everybody at Mooyah pivoted immediately. If Mooyah's franchise owners were going to take a hit, leadership was going to take a hit with them. We shifted to off-premise dining as fast as we could, and corporate covered the fees for third-party delivery apps like Doordash. We instituted a royalty deferment plan to make sure each restaurant had cash on hand to keep employees on the payroll.

Nobody had ever seen anything like the Paycheck Protection Program, but once it started we got 97% of our franchise owners enrolled in the portal and 100% of them got federal funds.

Mooyah's training program, which every franchise owner must complete, took place entirely in-person. Our training team was able to take it completely virtual within a month.

Through the hardships and uncertainties, over the course of hundreds of phone calls and emails, and even without seeing our store owners for months, our relationship with the Franchise Owners actually grew dramatically deeper. We never lost sight of our "plan to win," something corporate started putting together on day one. We did everything possible to communicate that plan around the organization.

By August, we had won — year-over-year same-store sales had improved over the course of the pandemic. On August 24, we opened a store in Guliford, Connecticut. It was the first store opened where the team had been fully trained on our new online platform. We were expecting a lukewarm welcome, but what we saw was gangbusters — one of our strongest openings ever.

The biggest key to leadership is being able to listen — really listen to your key stakeholders and understand the world from their perspective. Leadership's goal is to make the right choices for the brand. There can be no sacred cows — things either work or they don't.

Ultimately, Mooyah didn't just survive, it thrived.

By the end of 2020, Mooyah will have opened seven stores, with plans to open a new location in Manhattan's Times Square in January. We're not on the other side of the pandemic yet, but Mooyah has stayed true to its promises to franchise owners. Now, with a deeper, closer relationship than ever, Mooyah's leadership and its franchise owners are more prepared than ever to dominate not only the "better burger" segment but the entire fast casual segment.