CEO Q&A: How Has Covid-19 Affected Your Brand?
As part of our ongoing special coverage of Covid-19 and its impact on franchising, we’re asking franchise leaders how they’re responding to the effects of Covid-19 at all levels of their business. Below we offer an overview from 7 franchise brand leaders on how the pandemic is affecting them. If you have a story to tell about what you’re doing to support your brand, franchisees, customers, or suppliers please email us at stories@franchising.com.
Christine Specht, CEO, Cousins Subs
We started paying more attention to the news in early March with the shutdowns of the NBA, NCAA, and schools. On March 14, we started tracking daily sales and saw a significant shift in our business. We were having a great year, tending positive up to 7%. Sales began to drop: 17%… 20%… then suddenly 30% and 40% or more. They’re trending down at about 30% now. We have 99 locations, primarily in Wisconsin, with a group in Chicago and one in Indiana, and municipalities are taking their own approach to shelter in place protocols. All stores are affected differently. About one-third of our restaurants are drive-thrus, a direction we’d been moving in before Covid-19.
Stores are dealing with operational changes, and people are just hammering out their work. We went from no curbside pickup and within 3 days rolled it out. It was unprecedented, but we don’t have the luxury of time right now. We also have an easy pickup option for customers to prepay and grab their order off a shelf and go. From a corporate perspective, we’re looking where we can relocate our own restaurants to more freestanding sites so we can have drive-thrus. In terms of innovation, Covid-19 could have lasting benefits, such as curbside pickup, which we may roll out as a permanent thing.
Wade Brannon, President and CEO, Pigtails & Crewcuts
Covid-19 has affected our brand tremendously. We were caught off-guard and didn’t realize the true severity of what it was going to do to small-business owners. We are a children’s hair salon. We interact with people daily. Because of this pandemic, our salons are closed to protect our customers and employees. Right now our salons have pivoted from robust sales growth to survival mode. The franchise headquarters deferred royalties for March sales because no revenue would be generated in our salons in April. We need to make sure the financial burdens of our franchisees can be met during the shutdown. Without revenue, many owners are seeing cash reserves being tapped rather quickly. We are assisting our franchisees daily for the brand to survive.
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