Moe's Southwest Grill: Report on Business Development and Strategy

This report presents a comprehensive analysis of Moe's Southwest Grill, a rapidly growing fast-food chain. It begins with an introduction to the company's history, organizational structure, and strategic management, highlighting the role of key figures like Paul Damico. The report then examines Moe's strengths, including customer feedback mechanisms and the application of contingency and human relations theories. A major issue identified is the lack of online food delivery, with a recommendation to integrate this feature into their existing app. The report uses figures to show growth in customer base and average spending time. The report also includes a critique of the company's observation methods, with a conclusion summarizing key findings and recommendations for future development.

Running head: REPORT
Report
Student’s Name
University Name
Author’s Note

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................3
2. Organisational Structure.........................................................................................................3
3. Strategic Management and leadership...................................................................................4
4. A major issue of organisation and solution............................................................................6
5. Strength of the business.........................................................................................................7
5.1 General Discussion about strength...................................................................................7
5.2 Application of theories to evaluate the strength...............................................................7
Contingency Theory...........................................................................................................7
Human Relations theory –..................................................................................................8
6. Critique...................................................................................................................................9
7. Recommendation..................................................................................................................10
8. Conclusion............................................................................................................................10
Reference List..........................................................................................................................11

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1. Introduction
Moe's Southwest Grill is one of the fastest growing fast food chains of America. It
was founded in the December of the year 2000 in Atlanta, Georgia. The fast-food chain got
the name Moe's an acronym for Musicians, Outlaws and Entertainer. The restaurant chain is
currently having 500 stores in different parts of North America is currently serving an
average of 150 thousand guests per day. In the recent years, the company expanded its chain
to countries like Russia and Turkey. Presently, the company costs around 500 million and has
employees more than 10,000 with Mr Paul Damico as the President of the company since
2007 (Moes.com, 2018). Moe's is well known for its nachos, tacos and burritos. According to
a recent report, it came in to view that Moe's is opening a new restaurant on an average of
every six-day gap and since 2015, the company is growing and improving at a rate of 70%
every year (Moes.com, 2018). The company is having their research facility at Atlanta,
Georgia with the CEO himself as the Chief of the research facility.
Fig 1: Growth of
Moe’s US Franchises
(Moes.com, 2018)
2.
Organisational Structure
The organisational structure of the Moe's Southwest Grill is very simple. The
restaurant chain is owned by one of the famous organisation, Focus Brands. The higher
authority of the restaurant chain comprises of Mr Paul Damico as the president and CEO

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along with 10 other managers, executives and Vice Presidents, who looks after, the growth of
the company, marketing, food representation, public relations and so on (Moes.com, 2018).
The next level comprises of Scientists who researches and finds out how new things can be
introduced to make their restaurants differentiable from others (Taylor, Bogdan & DeVault,
2015). The third level comprises of the franchise managers who look after their own
franchise, appoint staffs for that branch, and do necessary changes in his own branch and so
on. The last level comprises of the staffs at different branches who are engaged in works like
food serving, cooking, table cleaning, and order taking and so on. The company claims itself
to be a customer friendly organisation with customers and the staffs being their priority.
According to a recent report by Brizek and Dosser (2014), the brand is having around 78%
customer satisfaction with their branches across different parts of North America.
3. Strategic Management and leadership
The restaurant chain is in business for more than 10 years but till 2008, the brand was
looking like a newcomer in the fast-food chain. Later, when the chain was acquired by Focus
Brands, Paul Damico was appointed at the management level. The brand made many changes
as a part of their strategic management and Paul Damico also played a huge role, he took the
responsibility to re-energize and refresh the brand (Moes.com, 2018). At the start of 2010,
Paul changed the business plan and decided to make the company grew. The first thing they
worked on is the aesthetics of the Moe's, which wasn't looked after since its birth. Among the
other changes were the changes in the colour of the walls, and influenced from the findings of
Hatch (2018), it can be commented that their new style menu with different and interesting
names to attract the customers, new furniture at all its franchises to give an ergonomic feel to
its customers and so on. As per the findings of Batenhorst et al. (2015), the main things for
which Moe's is now famous for includes their ‘Welcome to Moe's' greetings at all its
franchises and the ‘all you can eat' salsa bar. With this, they introduced self-service in all

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their franchises and the customers accepted it as they were delighted with the new coloured
walls with designs that refresh and re-energize them.
After Paul Damico coming to the administrative level, he made a new rule of all the
executives directly reporting to him with all the day's report and he personally made constant
interaction with the supply chains, regular customers with a greeting, and so on without
leaving the full work on his executives. The company hired new staffs with the maximum age
limit being 35 as they wanted energetic and positive staff, who would spread the positivity
among the customers (Moes.com, 2018). This new strategic management changes in early
2011 helped the brand to grow its customer base by 20 – 25 percent with a customer spending
an average of 38 minutes at the restaurant compared to previous 25 minutes.
2010 2012 2014 2016 2018
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Average Time spent Series 3
Fig 2: Chat showing increase in average spending time and customer base
(Source: Created by the Researcher)
Influenced from the findings of Jesinoski, Miller & Volker (2016), it can be opined that
another thing which helped the company to arose to such a great extent is the introduction of

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their new app named Rock ‘in Rewards through which, customers can use the Augmented
reality feature of the phone to interact with the characters and food items which are pictured
on the walls. This attracted customers including the kids towards it. All these changes helped
the company to become the leader of the Mexican fast-food companies with the highest
growth rate, customer base and customer as well as employee satisfaction rate.
4. A major issue of organisation and solution
In the race of time, all the companies and giant brands are competing with the
objective of growing their market share, customer base, revenue and so on. However,
according to the findings of Karam and Saydam (2015), the main thing, which the developing
and developed companies consider as a great opportunity to expand their market in different
regions is the online food delivery and partnership with food delivery organisations and
companies. Moe's despite having a good customer base and satisfaction rate, they are not
looking to expand their business online, through delivery.
Moe's is having their own Android and the iOS-based application named Rock ‘in Rewards
through which, the customers can view the menu cards and use the app to earn rewards based
on order at Moe's branches and franchises (Moes.com, 2018). As per the analysis of Kimes
and Laqué (2015), the main thing the app can do is the use of augmented reality to interact
with the food items and characters on the restaurant walls, but the company doesn't pay any
attention with no future hope to integrate a food delivery feature in the app. The company
should look into the matter as most of the restaurant chains are doubling and sometimes
tripling their income with the help of the food delivery. Influenced from the findings of
Lawlor, Dunne and Rowley (2016), it can be advised that Moe's can add their feature in their
own app with a minor update as they are having a well-optimised app. This will not only help

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the company to deliver food to many people but also will help the company to increase
customer base as well as the customer satisfaction.
5. Strength of the business
5.1 General Discussion about strength
Most of the business now a day has Strengths, weakness, opportunities and Threats.
Now we are going to discuss one of the major strength of the Moe's southwest grill business.
The strength is that the company cares about customer feedback and wants to improve
themselves with the help of that. With this objective, Moe's use different types of media
systems to take the feedback from their customers and can interact with customers
(Moes.com, 2018). For example, Moe's built their own app Rock ‘in Rewards which has a
feature allowing customers to customise their menu according to their taste and favourites.
With the help of this feature, MCGLOTHLIN (2014), states that people can choose different
ingredients, which they want to put on their foods served there, like taco, burrito or
quesadilla.
5.2 Application of theories to evaluate the strength
Contingency Theory
The contingency theory says the following things. Firstly, each and every organisation
is an open system, satisfied by careful management and adaptation to environmental
circumstances. Secondly, as per Suzuki, K., & Nelson, M. R. (2018), there is no best way to
organise a business, the appropriate task depends on the dealing of the given task and
environment. Thirdly, the management of the organisation must be concerned to achieve
goals. Lastly, different types of organisations are required in different environments. If we go
by this theory, Moe's Southwest Grill is an organisation, which is adapting to the changes like
influencing people with the use of social media, the management is also concerned with the

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achievement of the goals and worked with the software developers to develop the Augmented
Reality based app, which is the change is environment and demands of the customer as we
are advancing towards digitalisation. According to all these, the Contingency Theory is
justified, and the following feature is also justified as a strength of the organisation.
Fig 3: Comparison between Contingency theory and Organisation’s current position
(Source: Otley, 2016)
Human Relations theory –
According to this theory, the company should have a good interaction with its
employees as well as its customers and the company should advance towards betterment by
working on the feedbacks by the customers. In case if this theory is followed, Moe's has their
own public relations team and a software development team who are constantly associated
with taking feedbacks from the customers and with the objective to make their dining
experience good, the company integrated the augmented reality feature in their app, so that
customer can choose and customise their food on their own. Based on the findings of
Spradley (2016), it can be critiqued that the company management also tries to provide a
good working environment for the employees and employees are always in touch with the top
Contingency Theory
Business is satisfied by carefull management
Management must be concerned to acheive goals
Integration with different organisation and
adapation to condition
Organisation's current
position
Moe's is run by a team of professions and is
growing day by day with the help of the team
Management is concerned with yearly targerts
and targets to break previous ones.
Integrated with a software development
comnpany to develop app to satisfy customers.

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executives and the president of the organisation to motivate them. In this way, the theory
justifies the following point as the strength of the organisation.
Before App introdiuction After App introduction
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
Customer hapiness level Improvemenets based on customer feedback
Fig 4: Chart based on happiness growth of customer after providing feedback
(Source: Developed by the Researcher)
6. Critique
In the participant observation method, a top-level authority staff like the President or
CEO comes in disguise and keeps a watch on the employees by being an employee him. In
this case, the President of the company of the company became the employee at one of his
branches and kept a watch on the environment and staff behaviour. In the end, he found out a
staff was not up to the mark and he was not dealing customers politely and got fired up. As
per Schoffman et al. (2016), this not only helps to get an idea, what's going on in the smaller
branches but also to get detailed information, which is not in papers. Other ways to evaluate
business practice are – Checking customer satisfaction, taking 360-degree feedback and so
on.

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7. Recommendation
The Organisation is doing a great job by taking the feedback from the customers and
working on them, but they would have to introduce food delivery in their app or in
collaboration with other food delivering company. The food delivery service would help the
company to reach new limits with a huge bump in the sale of the products and customer base.
Moreover, the organisational structure and the leadership are in good hands.
8. Conclusion
Moe's Southwest Grill is one of the biggest Mexican fast food restaurant chain and is
working hard as a team to hold its topmost position in the fastest growing fast-food chain
with Chipotle Mexican Grill as its main competitor. Since the appointment of Paul Damico,
the company has changed very much and is advancing day by day. He introduced many new
concepts like funny food menus, changing the wall colours and designs, and ergonomically
designed furniture, the new app with augmented reality feature for customers to customise
food and earn rewards and so on. The company is working hard to spread its hands in
different parts of the world.

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Reference List
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