How a Moe’s Original BBQ Franchisee is Using the Good Jobs Strategy to Serve Better Food and Better Jobs
Q&A with restaurant owner Dewey Hasbrouck and store leaders Jessica Nickerson-Cowe and Chris Jandreau
In 2012, Dewey Hasbrouck opened up his first location of the Moe’s Original BBQ franchise in his native Bangor, Maine. He now owns and operates a second location in South Portland, Maine, employing around 35 total staff and serving up dishes like Alabama-style smoked chicken and pulled pork platters, which can be enjoyed for casual dine-in counter service, take out, and catering.
Inspired by the Good Jobs Strategy, Hasbrouck initiated a strategic change in 2021 to grow the business by focusing on a high-quality product and consistent service, delivered by tenured and cross-trained employees. Part of that journey included a Good Jobs Institute workshop in December 2021, with nearly all employees in attendance. His management team, including Jessica Nickerson-Cowe (Director of Operations) and Chris Jandreau (South Portland General Manager) have been instrumental in the planning and integration process.
Amanda Silver at the Good Jobs Institute spoke with Hasbrouck, Jandreau, and Nickerson-Cowe in 2022 to discuss their progress and early learnings. The interviews have been edited for length.
Amanda Silver: When you read The Good Jobs Strategy, the operating system resonated with you. But the main case studies in the book are all big retailers. What gave you the conviction that this framework could apply in a small business restaurant setting?
Dewey Hasbrouck: There were themes that I feel like are applicable to every business, and certainly to restaurants. The vicious cycle comes to mind, which really defined what was happening not only to our restaurant but other restaurants. The bigger picture clicked in terms of providing good customer service, good quality products, at a low price. I’ve always been a fan of Costco and would read about how they were paying $21 per hour while all their competitors were paying $11 or $12.
We generally paid people better than other restaurant jobs in town. But then I would look at the W2s of my employees at the end of the year, and I would see that they were working full time and making $30,000. And I would think, “How can they live on that?” And the fact is, they weren’t living on it. It was so eye opening to think that when you compare your wages against other restaurants, it looks like one thing. But when you compare them against the actual cost of living, it looks completely different. I knew the model was broken, and that’s where my head was at when I read The Good Jobs Strategy.
AS: You started offering health care to your employees over 5 years ago and rolled out significant pay increases in 2021. What prompted you to make this investment in your employees?
DH: With healthcare, I had the realization one day where I said, “How can I have people working here full time who aren’t covered by health insurance?” We had people in their late 20s and early 30s who had been here since we started, five or six years at that time. I felt like it was a moral obligation to offer it to my employees. It’s expensive, but it really helps you to keep your best employees.
Before we raised pay, we had tried different things: We tried profit sharing during Covid when we had some good months, but it rang very hollow. We tried to create a protective bubble around our staff with pizza nights and little perks. And it just never really improved their lives.
Before we raised pay, we had tried different things: We tried profit sharing during Covid when we had some good months, but it rang very hollow. We tried to create a protective bubble around our staff with pizza nights and little perks. And it just never really improved their lives.
Before the raises, we had a starting wage of around $13 per hour, now we’re starting at $16. I looked at everyone’s wages recently, and now they’re making between $26-$28 per hour with tips. We had some early issues because some people got a raise after not working there for that long, and that can feel unfair to everyone else, so we had to work through that. But you have to pay people and offer good benefits at the core of what you’re doing for your employees, and then you can expand out from there. If you’re just trying to do a few things around the edges, you can’t expect too much.
AS: Wages and healthcare are important, as is building career paths. Chris and Jess, you both started at Moe’s around 10 years ago. What has kept you at Moe’s and how do you think your tenure at Moe’s has helped you be more effective leaders?
Jessica Nickerson-Cowe: Since joining Moe’s when I was 18, I’ve never stopped learning: everything from the front to the back to catering to the books. It’s all really helped me to see the big picture of the job: how messing something up at the register affects the kitchen, how messing something up in the kitchen affects the books.
Chris Jandreau: Starting from the bottom, I know exactly what it’s like to be a dishwasher, do all the prep, run the line, which means I can do the work with the new people, and it makes it easier to manage them. I remember the first week Moe’s had first opened, and the co-founder of the whole Moe’s franchise, Mike Fernandez, was working on the line. All of the owners, including Dewey, they’re not afraid to actually work and do everything that we do. The first year I was there, Dewey would be in the dish pit. That team mindset is very different from places I had worked before.
We’ve hired managers that come in from outside over the years, but we’ve had better luck with the people we’ve bumped up from within. A lot of those [external] people were trained at a different restaurant with a different feel. When they’re from within, we know what we’re getting ourselves into and can train them for the job.
AS: You had also been making some strategic tradeoffs to focus and simplify your operations during the pandemic. Tell us about that process, and how you determined what was best for your customers and employees.
DH: I used to think, “How can I afford not to be open for 52 days a year?” But I always regretted [being open 7 days a week] because I felt that the employees needed a day of rest. During Covid, it provided us an excuse to close on Sundays. We were down a little bit following that, but the customers adjusted. Once you get something baked into your equation it seems to work out. And it made things easier, because everyone is exhausted after the peak on Fridays and Saturdays, so they can relax and be with their families.
We’ve also trimmed down a lot of our specials. We were running a different special five or six days a week. Even on Saturdays, when we had a bunch of catering stuff, or when we were short staffed. We eliminated 80% of that and now we’re down to our core menu and moved some of our main items like catfish to be a special. Now if we don’t have a bunch going on, we’ll run our nachos, which people are big fans of. We’ll do a big email marketing push and just blow it out on the weekend when we’re staffed for it.
This puts us on control of how busy we want to be and how many products that we want to run. That’s made a big difference for the staff because they know, any weekend, I will ask if they want to run a special, if they can do it. Now 90% of the time they’re the ones saying, “Can we do a special this weekend?”
AS: Restaurants are known for a front-of-house / back-of-house divide. But Moe’s is a little different, with cross-trained roles. What has been the impact of cross-training?
DH: We always knew our best employees were cross-trained to kitchen and front-of-house. We knew how valuable they were, but we would fall into a rut where people were comfortable in certain areas, and the next thing you know, everyone is in their spot. But this makes it challenging when somebody calls out. We wanted a structure so that people were experts in an area, but when it’s busier at the front, we want the kitchen to be able to come out and help the bag orders to and take customer calls. And when we’re busier in the kitchen, we want the front-of-house to be able to go back there and do dishes and do anything the kitchen needs to get done. They can’t do the most complicated things, but they know how to do the basics so that they can go back there and help.
Now people from the front-of-house are scheduled every week for a kitchen shift. People in the kitchen are scheduled every week to do front-of-house. It needs to be an understanding that that’s the role, so when we’re hiring, we tell them that they’re going to learn both sides of the operation. It changes how we hire, because we can’t have cooks with a nasty attitude, we need someone who likes to talk to people.
And there’s an intangible for us here: you end up having to schedule less people. Instead of saying you need 5 front-of-house people and 6 kitchen people, we just need 10 people total. The more trained up your people are, the less people you need to do the work, especially when they’re cross-trained. So I think that’s a big advantage that we’re going to add to our overall ability to make a profit this year. And since our employees share tips, it’s better for them, because fewer people working means they can keep more in tips.
And there’s an intangible for us here: you end up having to schedule less people. Instead of saying you need 5 front-of-house people and 6 kitchen people, we just need 10 people total. The more trained up your people are, the less people you need to do the work, especially when they’re cross-trained.
CJ: Probably the number one reason that everything is going so smoothly right now is our focus on cross-training. We realized that we had underutilized people — the front gets really busy, but it dies out fast. Front and kitchen work is pretty repetitive, so this way you get to do something a little bit different. This past Saturday when we had a big catering order, we had two front workers that worked the line the whole time to make sure it all got done, and they loved it.
AS: Our team at Good Jobs Institute ran a workshop with almost all of your employees in 2021. Can you tell us a bit more about the workshop experience?
DH: It takes a whole village to make this happen. I, as an owner, can’t just drop the Good Jobs Strategy on my employees and say, “We’re going to do this and we’re going to make money.” You have to have the employees buy into what you’re doing and appreciate what you’re doing. One thing that came out of the workshop was to begin to explain on a deeper level what we’re trying to do, which is more than giving them raises and benefits, it’s trying to structurally change the way we do business.
A lot of our people haven’t gone to college, and we had a couple high school kids there, so maybe they haven’t read about continuous improvement before. It was getting everyone together and helping them to understand a bigger picture of what they can do when they’re at work in the right environment. So if they ever go on to do stuff beyond Moe’s, it’s my goal to arm them with enough information so that they can go off and do anything and realize that they can make it better.
Once we broke everyone out into breakout groups and they wrote things down and categorized each one into whether it was easy to do and how effective it would be, everyone had this list of actions that they created. It was easy to pick off a couple of the smaller things and start to develop some momentum. It got everyone’s attention, it let people know this was serious.
JN: The most eye-opening thing from the workshop was how many ideas everyone had, and the energy and excitement to make the changes themselves when you give them the time and encouragement. For the longest time, Dewey would be the one directing and fixing everything, just to make sure it happened, and so that other people don’t have to slow down. But now, we’re realizing that isn’t the case for 95% of the problems. The employees see the problems and come up with ideas and want to put the work in, want to make the changes. Our goal right now is making the job easier and more fun for everyone, to keep the staff that we have and not lose any of our key people.
AS: What changes have you introduced since the workshop?
DH: I got really sick right when we rolled this whole thing out. My managers picked up the ball and ran with it while I was out. You have to have managers that are open to what you’re doing and understand the value of it.
We’ve done a few different things. We bought a small refrigerator and put a prep table on top of it and moved another prep table closer to the cooler so that they don’t have to walk all the way through the kitchen for some prep steps.
We’ve also taken a hard look at our catering process. There’s a lot of moving parts with catering: customers call in, the emails back and forth, sometimes there’s changes. We took time and defined our process in some respects and done some process mapping that’s been helpful.
The notable thing is that once you find one little thing, you find two or three others that are directly related and you wouldn’t have seen if you didn’t make that first step. And start asking, “What if we did this?” and see all the bigger opportunities around the corner that you didn’t think of when you were looking at things the old way. So we always have meetings with people and ask for everyone’s opinion and make sure they’re included in on the solution. It becomes a two-pronged victory: you fix a problem and your employees get more motivated and energized because they felt empowered.
JN: After the workshop, I remember meeting with 3 employees that had brought up a simple problem of customers not knowing where to get utensils. So, I asked them, “What do you want to do here?” and I’m suddenly surrounded by all the employees in the restaurant, because everyone was excited to figure this out. We decided to move the utensils to the other side of the soda machine, it was as simple as that, making it a smoother process that doesn’t disrupt the kitchen. It was a quick win that had a big impact. And everyone saw how easy it was and was excited about the next project, and they’re able to have fun making the changes themselves and building on them.
AS: After the workshop, not all the employees at Moe’s were ready to move in this (good jobs strategy) direction, and some were let go. How did you identify those people and what has been the effect on change efforts?
JN: We realized that most of us were on the same page about trying to improve, but others wanted to take the easy way out. We want to be able to keep paying people above a living wage, it’s a great job with great pay, and it’s an awesome place to work. But it’s about more than a paycheck: people here want to become better workers, but they also want to become better people, better communicators, to grow. You have to want that.
CJ: We knew for a long time that some people were not a fit with us. We kept dragging it along. But we saw that if we were going to move into this direction, we needed to raise the bar. So we put some performance targets in place to give them a chance. The first one was around attendance, just showing up on time, but we never got past that. Tickets don’t stop, catering keeps going, someone has to go home to see their family, if you’re showing up late it’s just disrespectful. It was a tough situation, but in the long run it’s so much better because we know that we won’t have to deal with those issues going into catering season.
AS: How has 2022 been for your restaurants? How are you feeling moving into your busy months?
DH: We’re really just ramping up and getting into our catering season. It’s definitely busy. But when we first looked at the numbers in January, it did not look so good. It looked like we might lose $200,000 this year. It was very scary. But then we plugged the numbers in and asked: What if we grow the business 15%? What if we grow catering by 10%? And started looking at growth and not looking at labor as a cost anymore. It was still on the P&L, but we said we’re going to look at growth and ask, “What can we take on?”
It looked like we might lose $200,000 this year. It was very scary. But then we plugged the numbers in and asked: What if we grow the business 15%? What if we grow catering by 10%?
We pretty much have a full staff in each store. We’re hiring a bit because we want to build in some slack, but I would say compared to just about any other restaurant we’re doing really well. And this means we’re able to take on more business.
This week, we have two 1200 person caterings. If we weren’t staffed for it, we couldn’t take that on. I used to have to manage every piece of something like that. Now I’m barely involved. Just a few years ago it meant I’d be doing 10 hours each day, now the teams are doing it, and I’m helping, but not bearing the brunt of all the stress of it. It’s amazing what we can handle.
We’re at a point where we have a good crew, people who’ve been here for a while, and I think as we move into the summer, which is our really busy season, I couldn’t be in a better position. I feel like we’re going to be able to handle the business that we were turning away last summer.
JN: With lower turnover, we can take on more business, spend more time with the employees, and we can have more fun. It means that when one of our regulars comes in, I can pull up someone who’s newer and introduce them. I can teach a front-of-house person how to make sauce. Instead of doing everything myself, right now I’m managing 4 employees who are focused on a better solution for organizing the kitchen, which gives them the chance to be involved in daily improvements.
CJ: We had already raised pay in 2021, so we were ahead of other restaurants. It has helped us keep the employees we have. Hiring can still be challenging because everyone has raised pay now, but we would have lost people because of pay.
When turnover is low and it’s the same people, I know they’re going to show up on time, I know how we work together. It’s a trust thing. There’s a lot less stress, everyone has fun because we’re super busy and everyone is in the right spot and get to do it well. Training is simpler, because when we have a new person, we have time to focus on them. Morale is much higher. It even makes scheduling easier. I used to have to schedule our best people with the ones that I know weren’t good, so they could balance each other. Which was bad for our best workers, and more stressful for me.
AS: What has been the impact for your customers?
DH: There’s no question that right now our food and customer service is as good as it’s ever been. That’s because we have good employees who have been here for a while. We’ve raised our standards.
There’s no question that right now our food and customer service is as good as it’s ever been. That’s because we have good employees who have been here for a while. We’ve raised our standards.
You just don’t grow the business if your food is inconsistent, if you don’t have good service. It’s an intangible, where I think we’re seeing growth because we’re providing a good product. There was a time last year when I didn’t feel good about what we were serving. When people aren’t trained well and they’re not bought into what you’re doing, they don’t care, when they were the only ones we had to work, it’s a big deal and affects your customers.
JN: The basics are important: knowledge of the menu, knowledge of the restaurant. And I think it lets us be different from other fast-casual restaurants. We offer delicious food, with a family feeling. We can really know our customers and have that relationship with them, which you usually only get at a full-service restaurant. We have the feeling that “friends meet at Moe’s.”
CJ: Everyone is fully on their game. From the second a customer walks through the door, there’s better customer service, we greet them. When the kitchen is fully trained and fully staffed, we have lower ticket times, better quality food. We have the options of doing specials and different sides. In the past when we haven’t had enough good people, we were throttling our catering business. It’s the worst feeling. But right now, we can take on big catering orders because we feel comfortable doing it.
AS: Jess and Chris, what are you most proud of in this journey? What are you most looking forward to?
JN: I’m proud of the way people have responded, how many of them have jumped on board. Dewey really is the rock of the restaurant. Customers are obsessed with him. He’s been in the restaurant pretty much every day for 10 years. As soon as he stepped out it was really scary. But to see everyone rally behind this work and the pride they are taking in taking this on has been so awesome to see. We always say Moe’s is a family, a community, but we really had to put it to the test. And everyone stepped up.
Before all this, Dewey would say it was like pulling teeth to get Chris and I to change things. Sometimes you just get too comfortable, in any industry. You just go through the pain today instead of rethinking the process. Now we know how easy it can be to take things on. How you can make these small changes.
CJ: We just went through an insanely busy catering day, but everyone was having fun and not stressed, it was so smooth. The goal is always that. And our team has the mindset that we want to open up another store, or a food truck, or both, and I’m really focused on that, and excited to see where that leads us.
AS: And Dewey, what advice do you have for other small businesses and food businesses who are rethinking their employee and operational practices?
DH: The one thing that I hear of consistently from other restaurant owners is that they’re dealing with this horrible cycle of turnover, and it’s gotten worse and worse. I know people are exhausted from it. I want to tell them that there’s another way, but it’s a significant investment. Employees are your biggest asset, but they don’t show up on the balance sheet. This is an investment, and it’s scary because it’s so new to our industry.
I had some money to cover some potential losses, and that’s what gave me the license to invest in this. I want everyone to do this. I really believe that. It’s a win-win-win for customers, employees, and owners.
I think it’s hard to make that first step. You have to make that investment in raises and benefits, but then you have to also go all in on the other operational choices. Fixing problems with your employees really engages them and I think they really appreciate what I am trying to do because they are part of it, and because it makes their jobs better.
You have to make money to stay in business, it’s my goal. I didn’t do this to go out of business. We’re doing this so that we stay in business and thrive and provide the best customer service and food that we can. And we think it’s enabling us to do that.
Good Jobs Institute is a 501(C)(3) non-profit founded in 2017. Our mission is to help companies thrive by creating good jobs. Our President and Co-Founder Zeynep Ton is a leading retail and service operations expert, Professor of the Practice at MIT Sloan, and author of The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits.
