Burrito Concepts brings Qdoba Mexican Grill to Springfield

Springfield’s restaurant business is competitive and challenging, but that didn’t deter partners Randy Allen and Jay Quintana – with district manager Jason Meyer – from introducing Qdoba Mexican Grill to local diners. Their first restaurant opened at the intersection of Kansas Expressway and Republic Road in August 2003.
The second restaurant opened in Battlefield Marketplace in August and the third, 2136 E. Sunshine, opened March 14.
Doing business as Burrito Concepts LLC, the company plans to open more franchise locations soon.
“We’re also opening a restaurant in Fayetteville the first of April and in Stillwater, Okla., across from Oklahoma State University the first of June,” Allen said.
“We have three locations in Tulsa that are just about signed. We’ve done the feasibility study and we’re 99 percent sure that will happen, probably sometime in July, August or September.”
Burrito Concepts also has prospects in Joplin and is doing preliminary investigation in Branson, and Bentonville and Rogers, Ark.
“We’re also negotiating a fourth location downtown, close to SMSU. We’re still looking for the right location to serve both the college and downtown markets,” he added.
Allen said the growth of the local franchisee is because of “great talent” that has been put into place with Quintana and Meyer, who both have years of experience in the restaurant business, and Aly Nims, the local store marketing manager. “We have 10 management people and 90 employees in the three locations,” he said.
Allen said his role is operations manager. “I develop, build and find new locations,” he said. “My background is working with Sam Hamra, who has 23 Wendy’s restaurants, and 10 Panera Bread franchises in Chicago and 10 in Boston. I was looking for a change.”
Allen serves as Burrito Concepts’ CFO, CPA and controller.
“We began looking into restaurant franchising. There are hundreds of restaurants to choose from. We narrowed the focus to fast/casual, which is not just fast food, but quality,” he said.
Qdoba began in 1995 when Anthony Miller opened the first restaurant in Denver with partner Robert Hauser. The concept was to offer one-of-a-kind signature burritos, which are 1.5-pound burritos that quickly caught on with customers. The food is prepared right in front of the customers.
Today the franchise has more than 190 restaurants and more than 600 locations in development.
In 2003, Qdoba was acquired by San Diego-based Jack in the Box Inc.
The local franchisees are pleased with their growth.
“We’re doing well and we’re excited about the reception Qdoba has received,” said Quintana, who has an extensive background in restaurants with Landry’s and Spaghetti Warehouse. “All our ingredients are fresh. Our chips are hand-cut and-fried daily. After 24 hours, what we don’t use is thrown out. The same thing with our chicken – it is grilled in a special marinade, and if it’s not served in one to two hours, it’s thrown out.”
The food’s not spicy, Quintana said, and it goes over well with kids.
But in addition to offering fresh and tasty food, Qdoba works to provide good service.
“It doesn’t matter if you have the best product in the world, if you overcharge or if you don’t have good service, people may come back once or twice. We’re not in the business to make people mad. We’re about friendly service. We care about our guests,” he said.
Nims said the $5 1.5-pound burrito is the most popular item.
“It’s our pride and joy,” she said. “Our service is as well. The average wait time in line from start to finish is 45 seconds.”
Guests go through a line and select the exact ingredients they prefer with their meal.
Allen estimates that there are more than 200,000 ways to have burritos or tacos at Qdoba.
“We seat 80 in each restaurant locally. We’re not fast food and we have a lot of customers order meals to go. We also do catering with hot taco bars at parties and events,” Allen said.
Allen said that Qdoba builds awareness by providing free taco bars to charitable organizations and raising money for such causes as Ozarks Food Harvest and Relay for Life.
“We’ve built our name and awareness through community service,” Allen said. “Our biggest challenge was that nobody had heard of Qdoba before. We had to get the word out and build the brand and get name recognition.”
Allen declined to disclose the company’s revenues, but he did say that Qdoba spends about $400,000 to get a new location up and running.
Allen said the partners hope to open 14 restaurants in the next five years.
“We’re way ahead of the development schedule by about three years already,” he said.
Though they can acquire more territory through the franchise, Allen said for the near future they will concentrate on developing restaurants in the southwest Missouri-northwest Arkansas-eastern Oklahoma area.