For Travis Worley, the restaurant business has always hit close to home. Growing up, he first took an interest in the industry at age 16, learning at the elbow of the head chef at the Pelican Cove in Sandusky, Ohio. He also grew up eating Marco’s Pizza, and later, he worked for the corporate headquarters of the Toledo-based chain, which dispatched him to Arkansas eight years ago to get a struggling franchise running smoothly.
Today, he and his business partner, Dan Cook, are the lords of the brand in Arkansas. Owners of 11 locations, they are also area developers, meaning they can issue their own franchises, through which they are connected to six more units. His is a challenging business, particularly on the labor front, but one which still runs on some very simple cornerstone ingredients.
“Our guests do quality control for us,” he said. “We have a program where we do guest surveys, and we have a scorecard where every store gets rated on their service. There’s no way for me or you to change that information. It’s literally what the guest says goes into your scorecard. That keeps us from being complacent, right? You have to make sure that you’re satisfying that guest because that guest is going to tell you how you did.”
Worley said the scorecard serves as ample motivation as stores try to compete for the best customer reviews. He said as an owner, it gives him a basis for conversations with store management on specific points of potential improvement.
“If you get the right people in place, the competition that you form between your restaurants on who’s going to do better can be powerful,” he said. “It’s not just sales; some stores can be challenged in ways, you know? There may be construction outside. If you have a competition set up among your stores, though, they’re going to compete against each other to become that top spot.
“My message to my employees, I tell them all the time, listen, we’re going to mess up sometimes. It’s going to happen because we’re human, right? It’s OK to mess up, but the important thing is how do we perform after we’ve messed up and still win that customer for life?”
Worley said it was a unique situation to have come from the corporate side of the company to the public-facing owner-operator role, both of which required a certain set of skills to be successful.
“I came in knowing all the specs. I knew all the training. I mean, some of the job aids were stuff that I formulated while at corporate,” he said. “I think the main thing that I learned on the owner-operator side was how valuable it is to build relationships with employees as a store owner. Sometimes you’re like a father to some people that don’t have someone in their life. I recently lost a general manager to cancer, and her daughters work for us. My district manager just lost his mother. As an owner, you’re a best friend. You’re with them through those hard times.
“When you’re with corporate, you’re in and out of so many different territories that you can’t really build those relationships. Now I can’t go a day without an employee saying, ‘Hey, I missed you,’ or ‘I’m so glad to see you,’ or they give you a hug.”
Worley’s relationships with his employees have really shined during challenging times in the life of the business. During COVID-19, his locations were flooded with business to the tune of 72 percent growth in sales.
“We were blessed to stay open, you know? We were called the essential workers,” he said. “That allowed us to keep employees employed, and they were able to make money, but as far as being a success, we were still fighting with commodities pricing, which were some of the highest we’ve ever seen. It was a difficult time.
“We are starting to see some relief of that. Gas has come down. Diesel is below $4 for the first time since I don’t know when. We’re starting to see some of those savings come in. We should start seeing much better profits in our stores than we’ve ever seen.”
The future looks so bright Worley said he and Cook are actively looking to grow the brand through owned stores and franchises to 30 units statewide. Even as they grow, he said, the same foundational concepts of quality and service will apply.
“I grew up on Marcos in Ohio, so my whole thing is I want our locations here to be that local favorite place to go,” he said. “It’s like we tell our people: If you’re embarrassed to open that box, then you shouldn’t open it because you shouldn’t be serving that one. The goal is to open that box, and you show the guests their pizza, and they say, ‘Wow, that’s a good-looking pizza.’”
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