Zaxby’s Savvy CEO Bernard Acoca Says a Business Turnaround Starts with People
Zaxby’s is famous for its scrumptious chicken fingers, the chain’s bread-and-butter item that comprises 60% of its daily sales. CEO Bernard Acoca reveals the special ingredient behind these plump, juicy delights: the people who work at Zaxby’s.
The privately held company’s newest chief executive officer has a strong track record in the fast-casual restaurant chain arena. Acoca was successful in various management slots, including top roles at Pizza Hut, Starbucks, and El Pollo Loco, before joining Zaxby’s in January 2022.
Today, from Zaxby’s headquarters in Athens, Georgia, he divulges the “big lesson” he learned about turning around any business: “It all starts with the people. When I look at running a company, the first core value I always establish is that employees come above all else.”
Acoca has been a marketer and executive in the restaurant sector for two decades. He spent three-and-a-half years as CEO of the fire-grilled chicken chain El Pollo Loco Inc.
While CEO of El Pollo Loco, Acoca led the brand through a “transformation agenda.” He accelerated the restaurant chain’s digital strategy. He streamlined the drive-thru and back of the house. The chain heartily embraced its hometown iconography of Los Angeles and history of Mexican cuisine while examining its design through a modern lens. In the next few years, the chain will remodel more than 300 restaurants to deliver a digital-forward, app-forward experience in spaces designed in a cutting-edge, contemporary style.
Four decades after opening its first U.S. location on Alvarado Street in Los Angeles, El Pollo Loco has grown to more than 480 restaurants across the United States. With his team, Acoca successfully faced the challenges of the pandemic, leaving the company in 2021 with positive sales growth and in a much better position to compete in the future,
Bernard Acoca Puts People First
Bernard Acoca’s management philosophy was forged at Starbucks and then brought to El Pollo Loco, which manifested itself in the mission statement created there: “Feed the love that makes us all feel like family.” The mission statement arose from the straightforward idea of treating employees like family — or, as they say in Spanish, “familia.”
“The guest experience will never exceed that of the team member experience,” Acoca says. “That’s a valuable lesson that continues to serve me well to the present day.”
Today, Acoca — like many business leaders — faces a challenging labor landscape. He accepts the challenge, working diligently to create an environment where employees feel they are a part of something bigger than just themselves.
Wherever he works, Acoca devises ways to inspire employees. He explains that being a constant cheerleader is one of his chief daily responsibilities. Additionally, he builds motivating environments where management recognizes employees for their accomplishments both big and small. The strategic filter he uses to make daily decisions is whether what is being considered will make people’s jobs easier and more rewarding.
“This is mission critical in an industry that these days is probably, on average, driving north of 200% employee turnover,” he says. “It’s so costly every time you have to replace a team member at the restaurants. You’re better off trying to figure out how to spend money, time, and effort retaining the people that you have.”
Bernard Acoca Believes in Building a Recognition Culture
Acoca celebrates employees throughout Zaxby’s; it’s something he learned to do at Yum Brands and El Pollo Loco. While at El Pollo Loco, Acoca created a program to celebrate employees’ milestone anniversaries. They get a monetary award and a large trophy — and the spotlight.
“The district manager and field leadership team members were required to go out to that restaurant and present it, You can’t phone-in or mail recognition. It has to be done in person with everyone gathered around to partake in the celebration” he says.
Examining a company’s roots helps Acoca develop programs that extend to the company’s heritage and employee culture. At El Pollo Loco, he recognized that the restaurants, the majority of which are located in Southern California, had an 80% Hispanic employee base, so he bolstered the company’s commitment to Hispanic culture, the arts, and the community. Acoca says, “This allowed the people in the company to say, ‘Wow! This company values who I am as an individual. This company understands who I am and cherishes and celebrates that.’”
In another welcoming move, Acoca spearheaded a massive community service project on Cesar Chavez Day — a day that is recognized throughout California as a day of service. More than 500 of the restaurant’s general managers, support center staff, franchisees, and customers arrived at LA’s historic Theodore Roosevelt High School in Boyle Heights, a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood, to honor the civil rights activist by completing 30 restoration projects. They repainted campus facilities, painted murals, planted a healing garden, refreshed garden beds, and cleaned up an orchard.
Under Acoca’s leadership, the El Pollo Loco workforce was predominantly Hispanic, but they weren’t the only employees. Some El Pollo Loco restaurants employed a mostly Black workforce, and the company also wanted to recognize them.
To commemorate Black History Month, the company hired Enkone, a local Black American artist in LA, to produce a mural at its South Los Angeles location, which communicated cultural themes of meaning and substance to that community. It also donated a percentage of the location’s profits to community groups in that neighborhood.
Bernard Acoca Encourages Passion in Employees
Programs that serve the community also become a point of pride for the employees who work for the company in Bernard Acoca’s experience. His time at El Pollo Loco led to some meaningful results.
“When I got to the company, the stock was trading at $9 a share,” he says. “When I left, it had more than doubled to $22 a share. I think people made the fundamental difference in that equation.”
Bernard Acoca firmly believes a CEO must stay aware of employees’ attitudes to help them stay passionate about their work.
“Convicted, passionate people can always overcome, to a certain degree, a bad strategy, or at least a strategy that maybe has been thought through 80% of the way,” he says. “At the end of the day, employees make it happen. If the employees are not convicted, I don’t care how great your strategies are, how smart they are — it’s all going to be for naught.”