On Paul Damico’s first day as president at Moe’s Southwest Grill, there were no meetings. There was no slowly easing into the business. There was hardly even time to talk. It was all hands on deck, and he had to roll up his sleeves and be prepared to help anyone and everyone in any way, even though he didn’t know what was going on.
It was Cinco de Moe’s — May 5 and the burrito restaurant franchise company’s single largest business day of the entire year.
“I don’t know why that happened,” Damico says. “I didn’t know there was a Cinco de Moe’s, but I started on Cinco de Moe’s, and it was a little crazy in the office that day.
“It was a little overwhelming the first day, and it also brought to me the importance that this day has on the system and on the team.”
It was his first lesson in understanding the chain, which was struggling at the time. It had been acquired by FOCUS Brands from Raving Brands less than a year prior to him starting and was being run by the now chairman of FOCUS. The company had gone through rapid growth since its inception in 2000, but franchise sales at that time weren’t that strong, and franchisees and employees were uncertain about the future as they struggled to be a part of the new FOCUS Brands family.
“I brought some stability in the group and started to build a team that would take this brand, which had grown at an unbelievable rate through the first seven years; we were going to start to stabilize it because they had grown so fast — they were playing catch-up,” he says. … “We needed to settle down and put some processes in place.”
Despite uncertainty on the part of employees and franchisees, Damico was confident. He had been part of the FOCUS Brands family previously as a Cinnabon and Carvel franchisee, so he knew FOCUS was a good company that would work well for Moe’s. He just needed to get the right people in place so he could go on to add better processes to stabilize the organization and poise it for more growth
“I like to say, ‘Put the right people in the right seats on the bus,’” he says. “Kind of cliché, but it was something that really needed to happen here, and it took every bit of a year to make that happen. We had to bring in some new talent. We had to shift some talent.”
