Case Study: Firehouse Subs achieves 1st-place beverage satisfaction and improved guest experience with Service Management Group (SMG)

Firehouse Subs blazes a trail to excellence with the help of its SMG partnership

FireHouse Subs partnered with Service Management Group (SMG) to tackle the challenge of maintaining consistent, excellent guest experiences across its 600+ restaurants. The brand needed actionable, restaurant-level guest feedback and competitive benchmarking to turn insight into operational improvements and better national rankings.

Service Management Group (SMG) implemented the branded Excellence Monitoring System (EMS) — a tailored guest survey, real-time reporting (including an iPad app) and a benchmark database — to pinpoint issues and guide investments. Using SMG data, FireHouse Subs added ice dispensers to reduce drink wait times and improved shift- and daypart-level performance; beverage satisfaction rose from 8th to 1st nationally in under a year, weekend-evening Overall Satisfaction grew by 3 percentage points, and benchmarking showed lifts vs. peers (+4 pp Overall Satisfaction, +7 pp Taste, +1 pp Likelihood to Recommend); top fundraising restaurants also generated about $180,000 more annual revenue than the bottom performers.

FireHouse Subs

Rich Goodman

Director of Operations Services