Sometimes the main challenge for an incoming restaurant CEO is getting a rein on a runaway horse. For Gregg Majewski, new chief of three-chain Mongolian Concepts, Job One is more akin to opening the corral gate and letting his charges go all out for a bit.
Majewski moved to the top job at the multi-concept operation after a long run in the C-suite at Jimmy John’s, which he most recently served as CEO. Arriving at Mongolian Concepts, he found three concepts suffering less from fundamental issues than a mindset they should be content with trotting in place.
The middle-sized chain, 20-unit bd’s Mongolian Barbecue, was a hot novelty 20 years ago. Then, as now, patrons filled a bowl with just-cut vegetables and other fresh ingredients and handed the mix over to a cook, who stir-fried the fixings on a large flat-top grill as patrons watched, listened and savored the aroma. They then sat down at a table setting on par with what they’d find at a full-scale casual-dining restaurant.
“It was something so unique that they wanted to keep coming back to it,” Majewski said during an interview with Restaurant Business. But “looking back over the years, it has not changed.”
Majewski quickly corrects himself: Steps were taken, but in the wrong direction. Ingredients were downgraded to save on costs, starting a vicious cycle—the more quality that was sacrificed, the more traffic eroded, the more costs had to be cut.
“The brand is still a lot of fun, but the food hasn’t been maintained where it should be,” says Majewski. “They are in a stage where they need a ton of love.”
Fortunately, he adds, the staff has that passion. It’s just a matter of giving them free rein to act on it, with some inspiration coming from a sister concept, the five-unit Flat Top Grill. The team behind bd’s is already upgrading ingredients and sauces. It has also developed a dozen composed bowl meals both to flash some innovation and facilitate takeout and delivery sales, which now average 20 to 30% of total revenues across Mongolian’s three brands.
Flat Top Grill “is going to be my culinary experience,” says Majewski. “It’s going to be a little more trendy.
“The food was always incredible—high-end, great products, beautiful vegetables,” he continues. “All that is still there. Flat Top is still food conscious, because of the employees. The problem was, no one knew what to do with that.”
The culinary team, which Majewski lauds as extraordinary, was often held back by prior regimes from keeping the menu current. “We’re letting them loose,” he says.
Mongolian Concepts’ workhorse brand is Genghis Grill, a concept founded by Which ‘Wich creator Jeff Sinelli. Majewski calls it his golden goose and the most mainstream of the company’s three brands. Although the Mongolian grill is a centerpiece, just as it is for bd’s and Flat Top, Genghis is more quick-service in style and ambiance.
“It’s the one we could grow the fastest,” Majewski says. With 51 units, it’s already the company’s largest operation.
But it, too, badly needs to reverse some of the restrictions that were imposed by prior regimes, Majewski says.
“They focused on the wrong things--they tried to improve things by cutting, cutting, cutting, which is exactly the opposite of what you should do,” he says.
Right now, he continues, fans visit a Genghis about 2.6 times a year. “If we want to get them in several times a month, we need to improve the product,” he says. “We want to be the best of the best.”
That means catching up with the times. For instance, Genghis doesn’t offer cauliflower rice, an item that seemed an obvious fit for the brand. “We’re behind the eight ball on that,” Majewski says. “We’re in the test kitchen right now.”
Similarly, he adds, “how can you be a stir-fry concept if you don’t offer pea pods?”
An obvious move for the parent of three concepts, all featuring a stir-fried menu, was to combine them into one brand, a move that would presumably provide more marketing firepower and an opportunity to cut costs. But each of Mongolian Concepts’ three have their own geographic and market niche, and very distinct personality, says Majewski.
He believes his long tenure at the Jimmy John’s sandwich delivery chain, where he served stints as COO and CFO as well as CEO, will help in raising the potential for all three.
Jimmy John’s was rock-solid in its operations, he explains. “The systems and procedures, getting all stores to operate as one, that was what we were all about,” Majewski says. At Mongolian Concepts, “those are the things we’re really going to focus on.
“The other thing is caring about the food,” he continues. “Everyone talks about how limited and simple Jimmy John’s menu is. But we were passionate about the food.
There’s also the possibility several steps down the road of tapping what he learned about providing in-house delivery. Right now, his charges use third-party services.
“I’m not saying I’m never going to look at delivery. I know that side,” he says.
But first there’s the matter of loosening the reins.