By Ed Avis
When the COVID-19 crisis took hold across America in mid-March, restaurants scrambled to get a handle on the situation. Chronic Tacos, which has 49 locations across the United States and 8 international locations, deployed a tactic more commonly associated with government agencies: a crisis management team.
“When the crisis first hit, there were just so many unknowns,” says Michael Mohammed, the company’s CEO. “You weren’t just concerned about sales, you were worried about everybody’s well-being. Because we’re a franchise, we wanted to make sure we were communicating with the franchisees about what was happening, both from a health and safety standpoint and an economic point of view.”
Mohammed says he fired up his crisis management team the day the shutdowns began. The team was divided into groups dealing with operations, marketing and development.
“Our focus was diverted from strategic projects we were working on and we put our full efforts towards dealing with the crisis at hand,” Mohammed says. “We had a team member focused on specific vendor related issues; one focused on safety and health issues to ensure everyone was following the ever-changing protocols; and another on finance to help franchisees navigate the Cares Act program.”
The marketing-focused team members ensured that the restaurants continued serving customers even with their dining rooms closed.
“Obviously, people would be scared to come into the restaurants,” Mohammed says, “so we wanted to make sure all of our online functionality, our apps, were in place and optimized. We made sure all of the locations were connected with the third-party delivery programs. That was part of our business already, but we wanted to make sure it was fully integrated, that we weren’t going to miss out on business.”
The marketing staff also came up with the idea of creating family packs, such as their taco kit that includes a choice of protein, tortillas, rice, beans, chips, salsa, queso, guacamole and churros. The family pack served four for $30.
The operations group helped franchisees with business issues. For example, they helped them apply for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans and coached them on negotiating with landlords if they needed rent abatement.
“There was constant communication with the franchisees so they would have the information they needed to survive,” Mohammed says.
The crisis management team still meets weekly via online video, as does each group within the team.
“It’s definitely been a challenging time, but we’ve got a strong system and strong franchisees,” Mohammed says. “Now we are less in crisis mode and looking strategically at this next quarter and what needs to be done.”