Five years af­ter re­viv­ing a fal­ter­ing in­ter­na­tion­al fran­chise in T&T, Quick Ser­vice Hold­ings Lim­it­ed is be­ing tasked with do­ing the same with Wendy’s.

Daniel Fakoory, man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Quick Ser­vice said Wendy’s In­ter­na­tion­al ap­proached his com­pa­ny to res­ur­rect the fran­chise in Trinidad and To­ba­go af­ter the chain’s restau­rants in the coun­try closed abrupt­ly in Feb­ru­ary. While there were con­cerns about the op­er­a­tions of the fast food restau­rant for some time, the shut­down of the fran­chise came with­out any pub­lic an­nounce­ment, but not as a sur­prise. For years there had been ques­tions about the health of the fran­chise.

Cus­tomers had reg­u­lar­ly com­plained that af­ter plac­ing an or­der for many favourites on the menu they would of­ten be told it was not avail­able. More wor­ry­ing­ly, re­ports con­cern­ing the seizure and auc­tion of restau­rant equip­ment by debtors in re­cent years left many to won­der if the fran­chise would last, in­clud­ing Fakoory him­self, who felt the brand’s strength could still be vi­able in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“We have all seen the de­cline of Wendy’s over the last five or six years. From a brand per­spec­tive, it is still a very strong and rel­e­vant brand on the in­ter­na­tion­al lev­el how­ev­er it was suf­fer­ing in Trinidad, said Fakoory, “The op­er­a­tor, the for­mer op­er­a­tor was run­ning low on stock all the time or run­ning out of stock for one rea­son or the oth­er.”

Wendy’s Tacarigua Store drive-thru service.

Fakoory gave an as­sur­ance that this would not be the case with the brand un­der the um­brel­la of his com­pa­ny.

“The num­ber one prob­lem the fran­chise had pre­vi­ous­ly was prod­uct avail­abil­i­ty. So we are us­ing the ex­ist­ing sup­ply chain that we use right now for Pi­ta Pit and Domi­no’s, which we have no prob­lem with our ver­i­fied im­porter. Our third-par­ty dis­trib­u­tor, they im­port all of our prod­ucts. We’ve nev­er had any prob­lems with them in the past. We don’t ex­pect to have any prob­lems with Wendy’s ei­ther,” he told the Busi­ness Guardian.

He ex­plained Quick Ser­vice’s work with the turn­around of Domi­no’s was piv­otal in se­cur­ing the fran­chise, which they had in­quired about be­fore the pan­dem­ic.

The piz­za chain joined the Quick Ser­vice Hold­ings group in 2017 and has seen a steady turn­around since then.

“We picked up Domi­no’s at three stores. Each of those three stores, they’re up over 50% in rev­enue from what they were do­ing when we took it over. Some stores have dou­bled their rev­enue from when we took over. And since then, we’ve opened four stores and open our fifth store in Ari­ma next month,. So we’ll be at eight stores,” said Fakoory.

He at­trib­uted the turn­around to fo­cus­ing on the brand’s val­ues and ex­e­cut­ing prop­er cus­tomer ser­vice.

“There’s not a busi­ness in this world that of­fers great ser­vice and great qual­i­ty prod­uct at val­ue, that is not thriv­ing and do­ing well. So it’s just a mat­ter of ad­dress­ing both of those ar­eas ser­vice and qual­i­ty,” he said, “With Domi­no’s the pre­vi­ous fran­chisee was not fol­low­ing the fran­chise mod­el to a tee. If they were, they would have put a large em­pha­sis on tech­nol­o­gy, which has im­proved the speed of ser­vice to the cus­tomer and the ease of or­der­ing. They should have rein­vest­ed in this de­liv­ery fleet which we’ve done. They should have changed and re­vamped their menu,” he said.

Wendy’s Tacarigua Store management team.

He al­so not­ed, like Wendy’s, prod­uct avail­abil­i­ty be­came an is­sue for the pre­vi­ous fran­chise hold­ers of the chain.

Fakoory said while his team did see in­creased chal­lenges along the sup­ply chain as a re­sult of the pan­dem­ic and the sub­se­quent Rus­sia-Ukraine con­flict, the com­pa­ny had strate­gies in place to keep ahead of de­mand.

He said in par­tic­u­lar, these strate­gies were eas­i­er to ex­e­cute in larg­er chains as op­posed to small­er scale busi­ness­es.

“What we have seen is with fran­chis­es like Pi­ta Pit we are much more vul­ner­a­ble. Larg­er fran­chis­es like Domi­no’s, these guys buy com­mod­i­ty con­tracts over longer pe­ri­ods of time, so they’re able to ab­sorb shocks in the sup­ply chain. So when they buy cheese, we are locked in for the sup­ply of cheese at a cer­tain price from months ahead of time. So it ab­sorbs some of these shocks that you do get from sup­ply chains. But yes, we have seen an in­cre­men­tal price in­crease of raw ma­te­ri­als, like every­one else some more dras­tic than oth­ers de­pend­ing on the brand,” he said.

The ac­qui­si­tion of Wendy’s has placed Quick Ser­vice in a new brack­et of the restau­rant sec­tor, name­ly the burg­er and sand­wich cat­e­go­ry as well as dri­ve-thru ser­vice.

Fakoory was ea­ger to en­ter this mar­ket, de­spite Trinidad and To­ba­go be­ing typ­i­cal­ly known for its affin­i­ty for fried chick­en as the pre­ferred fast food.

He said in re­cent years the palette of con­sumers has start­ed to ex­pand.

“The Trinidad and To­ba­go con­sumer has been de­mand­ing more qual­i­ty. They’re look­ing for bet­ter ser­vice. They’re look­ing for a bet­ter val­ue for their mon­ey. They’re look­ing for speed of ser­vice. They’re look­ing for con­ve­nience. So yes, we have been tra­di­tion­al­ly a chick­en and chips coun­try, a chick­en mar­ket. But Wendy’s has a va­ri­ety of chick­en prod­ucts on their menu as well, which we plan to in­tro­duce more and more. So that’s an­oth­er area of the op­er­a­tion that the pre­vi­ous fran­chisee did not de­vel­op much more,” he said.

He point­ed out that even af­ter the clo­sure of Wendy’s ear­li­er this year, there was in­ter­est in the brand from the pub­lic ex­em­pli­fied by cu­ri­ous cus­tomers who showed up as the Tacarigua branch was be­ing ren­o­vat­ed for its re­open­ing to­mor­row.

“We are still see­ing peo­ple dri­ving up to the cus­tomer dri­ve-through win­dow. Think­ing we are open,” said Fakoory, “Even though they saw that we closed in Feb­ru­ary, peo­ple are still com­ing in check­ing to see if they were still open. That just goes to show the type of eq­ui­ty of the brand, and the strength the brand has.”

Un­like Domi­no’s, Quick Ser­vice did not in­her­it all of the pre­vi­ous Wendy’s lo­ca­tions when the fran­chise was ac­quired. Fakoory not­ed that es­tab­lish­ing new lo­ca­tions will form a sig­nif­i­cant chunk of the group’s in­vest­ment go­ing for­ward.

“The in­vest­ment is to come with the new stores. So just the ac­qui­si­tion of the fran­chise was one part of the in­vest­ment I would say it is a sig­nif­i­cant part but it’s not the re­al heavy lift­ing. The re­al heavy lift­ing comes when you start build­ing all these new stores that cap­i­tal cost is heavy. That we’re talk­ing about six to eight stores in a short space of time. So that’s where the re­al sig­nif­i­cant fi­nan­cial de­mands arise,” he said. The com­pa­ny how­ev­er did have a brand new ap­proach it would ex­plore in the roll­out of new lo­ca­tions start­ing with two to three stores for the next three years.

“That will help us roll out our de­vel­op­ment plan of about 10 stores through­out the coun­try. Start­ing with the first one we are re­open­ing in Tacarigua this week, and then we will be look­ing at two to three mov­ing for­ward for the next three years this is all de­pen­dent on site avail­abil­i­ty. We have some sites al­ready ear­marked, we have about four al­ready,” he said, “So we can start rolling those out in 2023 at a rapid pace be­cause the new mod­el that we go­ing with, some are brick and mor­tar but some are al­ready pre­fab­ri­cat­ed stores. So it’s re­al­ly a quick turnkey op­er­a­tions that come as­sem­bled with equip­ment, with every­thing, you just need to pre­pare the site and drop it down on the site and hook up the util­i­ties and they’re ready to go. It can be as fast as two to three months and as very rapid for a store (to be built). Es­pe­cial­ly when the sup­ply chain is­sues with equip­ment and so forth.”