Cousins Subs navigates COVID-19 challenges, seizes opportunities

The past six weeks has been a trying time for local full-service restaurants, many scrambling to launch curbside and delivery service to survive or closing up shop all together as the COVID-19 pandemic has forced dining rooms to shut down.

But the current climate hasn’t required as drastic a shift for fast-casual or quick-service concepts, which already position their business around off-premise dining and, as a result, have been able to maintain nearly full operations during a public health crisis.

Such is the case for Menomonee Falls-based Cousins Subs.

Of Cousins’ 99 corporate and franchise store locations (and growing) in Wisconsin, Illinois and Indiana, only nine closed or temporarily suspended operations due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Like most of the industry, Cousins took a hit at the onset of the outbreak in mid-March– sales were down 26% week one and 36% week two. Those numbers have since improved and sales have begun to grow, said company president Jason Westhoff in a recent interview with BizTimes Milwaukee. 

“We’re still performing at a level that we can stay in business,” Westhoff said, adding that funds through the federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program have helped. He declined to disclose how much PPP money the company received. 

Comparable sales across the company’s 27 corporate stores are now down about 18.5%, but that’s not the case across the board.

“We literally have a number of stores that are actually positive sales right now, which is incredible, but then we also have a number of stores that are still 50% down,” Westhoff said.

Performance these days depends on the store and its surrounding market– whether there are contactless options such as a drive thru and delivery available in the area. Unlike sit-down restaurants, Cousins isn’t dependent on its dining room so having to close them down hasn’t made much of a difference.

“We’re fortunate that only 15% of our guests are dine-in guests to begin with,” he said. 

Restaurants have remained open without dining rooms, but Cousins has seen a 50% drop in in-store orders as diners stay home or attempt to reduce exposure. Call-in orders have doubled, online orders have tripled and drive thru orders are up 50%, said Westhoff.

The company was prepared to meet that demand. Last year, it launched third-party delivery service via its website and mobile app at nearly 80 locations in Wisconsin and Illinois. And in 2018, the company rolled out a new point-of-sale system across its entire store footprint.

The platform made it possible to add curbside and in-store ‘easy pick-up’ to all locations in a matter of seven days from when COVID-19 started to impact sales.

Contact has been reduced inside stores as well. Orders are taken at a single register where a plexiglass partition separates the employee and the customer. Floor markers remind customers waiting in line to stand six feet apart, but that’s been tough to enforce, said Westhoff.

Employees aren’t mandated to wear face masks, per Center for Disease Control guidelines, but Cousins provides them at its corporate stores and offered them to franchises. In addition, stores are replacing sanitation buckets, cleaning high-touch areas more frequently and employees wear gloves.

Westhoff anticipates these measures to continue once seating areas reopen, which will be subject to safety standards of their own. Depending on the size of the store, the number of tables will be reduced or tables will be marked off somehow to keep diners separated.

Corporate is responsible for guiding its franchises in the reopening process, but franchise owners will have the option of keeping their dining rooms closed– and some will take that route, said Westhoff.

“There are some people out there who have underlying health conditions and are concerned about reopening and having that many people in any one given time,” he said. “We certainly have to give (franchisees) the liberty of doing that and letting them use their judgement on how they’re going to reopen their own dining rooms.”

Navigating the challenges of the past six weeks and having time to ramp up has helped the company and its employees prepare for a time when diners are able to dine out again, said Westoff.

“And if changes are made, we can be nimble,” he said. 

Options will be limited as some full-service restaurants inevitably go out of business, so Cousins expects an increase in store traffic, just in time for summer’s peak season.

“The difficulty right now is to get people to come off unemployment and get people working in a store when the unemployment benefits are just as good as what they’re earning in the store,” he said. 

Get more news and insight in the April 27 issue of BizTimes Milwaukee. Subscribe to get updates in your inbox here.