May 30, 2024
Bob Wright, President & CEO, Potbelly Sandwich Works
How To Scale Amazing Brand Experiences Without Losing Your Mojo
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When trying to grow a food chain it can easily lose its character and freshness as everything becomes about speed and profits. And, when you are a chain that was built on the back of amazingly fresh food and unique in-store customer experiences, how do you grow and expand to 2000 locations?
From humble beginnings in 1977, and being named to “America’s Fastest Growing Private Companies” in 2005, to now having over 400 locations and headed to 2000, Potbelly Sandwiches has been growing with quality in mind. During covid they took steps to reinvent themselves through tech, investing heavily into their team—and creating an app and rewards program that kept them breathing as many companies drifted.
On this episode of The Reboot Chronicles, Potbelly CEO Bob Wright unpacks how to grow a brand without losing its identity. Listen in to the inside story on how he is rebooting this loveable brand once again—aggressively expanding their global footprint, investing in digital loyalty platforms, and competitively positioning them to provide the next level of authentic consumer experiences.
Rebooting Through Covid
Bob started as the CEO of Potbelly in 2020 after leaving the top job at Wendy’s. When he came in he noticed two things, a “100 percent debt-free” ledger and a need for a reboot. This is where the restructuring started, not in restructuring the stores and the food but in restructuring the back end. An entirely new corporate team and more emphasis on their digital assets and digital marketing including a better internet/app experience and rewards programs to keep people coming back.
Right Team – Right Time
Expanding is difficult for a fast-casual restaurant like Potbelly, which prides itself on its quality ingredients and location experience. As they don’t want to go the McDonald’s or Wendy’s route of expanding and distribution centers, they decided to turn to franchising. Although it can be risky and expensive if the franchisee fails, they have seen a “three or two to one sales to investment ratio”, so it is a quick and profitable payback. The other avenue for expanding they have done is boosting their catering business. As Bob puts it “In a lot of cases you can have thousands of dollars in before you even unlock the doors in the morning.”
Picking A Territory And Owning It
It can be easy to jump onto the latest trend just to grab whatever flavors of growth you can get, we all have seen fast-food restaurants start doing breakfast or have a limited-time celebrity collaboration meal. For Potbelly they are looking to strengthen the pillars they have already built on. One of those pillars is quality, and “quality still trumps most everything in the food space,” Bob says, and that is something are focusing on more and more even as they expand and get bigger.
