COO Sharlene Smith has been formalizing processes and procedures for the past couple of years, leading to higher accuracy and speed-of-service scores

Zaxbys has generated slow and steady growth throughout its 35 years, squarely positioning itself in the largest 40 U.S. chains. In 2024, sales increased by more than 5% year-over-year, according to Technomic, while the company’s unit count rose nearly 4%. The chain is expecting to surpass its 1,000th unit milestone in the third quarter.

Now the chain is ready to accelerate beyond “slow and steady,” with a goal of moving from low-to-mid-single-digit growth to 10%, as chief executive officer Bernard Acoca outlined during a recent interview at Zaxbys Atlanta headquarters. Of course, when the pace of expansion swiftly picks up, operational execution becomes more critical.

To lead that execution, Acoca recruited chief operating officer Sharlene Smith in 2022. Smith, who previously served as vice president of operations at Papa Johns and, prior, spent more than 30 years in operations roles at McDonald’s, has been busy refining some of the five strategic pillars included in Zaxbys’ “Grow to Win” plan. She has formalized processes and procedures that didn’t previously exist and has helped ready the company for its next phase of expansion.

One of those pillars, “moving together as one with speed and purpose,” falls squarely in Smith’s purview. The goal is to bolster throughput and accuracy scores to yield stronger unit economics and spur franchisee development, but plenty of work had to be done first.

“When I came into the business, it was on the heels of the pandemic, so the world had gone very off-premise and still 70% of the business is at the drive-thru,” Acoca said. “However, speed at the drive-thru was not our strong suit — we were slower than our key competitor set. We had to work very assiduously to shave seconds.”

Zaxbys added tablets in the queue to take orders and payments, remodeled drive-thru stations, and began implementing technology such as A.I.-augmented cameras to identify bottlenecks. Acoca said this work has enabled Zaxbys to outperform the industry on both sales and transactions for the past year, and speed of service is now 20% faster than it was in 2022.

Moreover, the company started measuring speed and accuracy metrics at each store to determine where the holdups were — one of Smith’s first changes.

The “poster child” for operational standards, according to Acoca, is order accuracy. When he first came on board in late 2021, accuracy scores were “concerningly low” because of Zaxbys biggest differentiator — its 12 proprietary sauces.

“Those 12 sauces were actually causing order accuracy issues that were causing us to receive less than ideal scores,” he said.

To correct those scores, Smith and her team launched an initiative called, “It’s in the bag.” Restaurants added “sauce summary” screens that clarified on kitchen display systems what needed to go with each order, color coded the sauces and added clear bags.

“In the past, our sauces were in the back of house. We moved them to the front of house and put them in a clear bag, so guests can see that their Zax sauce is in the bag,” Smith said. “We started with what the customer was telling us. They love our food and sauces, but we were not where we needed to be from an accuracy standpoint. We knew we had great food, but if we couldn’t get the sauces right, we also knew we had a big opportunity.”

These small changes improved order accuracy scores by 12%.

Speeding things up required a bit of a balance. One easy decision to expedite orders is to just cut the menu, but not at the expense of what customers want. Consider Zaxby’s Zalads, for example. Prior to Smith arriving, the chain whittled down its salads to two options and contemplated going down to just one.

“Why would we do that? We’re a destination for Zalads,” she said.

The “Prime Time Zalads” initiative was launched. Essentially, Zaxbys ensured the mix for each salad was the same, and that the toppings for each could be easily added. This initiative shaved off up to 10 seconds, and Zaxbys now has four Zalads on the menu — Asian Zensation, Blue Zalad, Cobb Zalad, and House Zalad.

“I believe we would have lost a lot of guests if we went down to one Zalad,” Smith said.

She also implemented a new system to collect internal feedback about operational hurdles and said her team can now pivot faster because of that information. Further, Zaxbys put into place a new store opening team that supports franchisees “from the time they decide to build to the time they open the door.”

“The team is constantly asking how we can do things better and our (overall satisfaction) scores at those new stores are about 3% better than existing stores,” she said.

Any new process and procedure put into place is first put to the test at Zaxbys 140-plus company-owned stores. Smith said this collection of restaurants is necessary to continue moving the needle on operational refinement.

“We won’t ask our franchisees to do anything we ourselves can’t do or execute,” she said. “We test and implement in our own stores and make sure we can deliver without a negative impact on speed and accuracy. Some of these changes are basic, simple, procedural things that we call brand standards now.”

According to Acoca, there is plenty of proof these operational changes are working.

“You can see it in our AUVs (which jumped above $2.7 million in 2024). Also, for nearly a year we’ve been outperforming the industry in both sales and transactions,” Acoca said. “The guests are rewarding our work with more visits.”

Contact Alicia Kelso at Alicia.Kelso@informa.com

Source https://www.nrn.com/fast-casual/zaxby-s-focus-on-operational-standards-has-driven-sales-and-traffic-growth

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