More Moe’s On the Way, Owner Says

Melanie Hoggard, owner of six Moe’s Southwest Grill locations in Arkansas, is planning to roll out three more Moe’s in the next two years: in Fayetteville and Jonesboro with the third location to be determined, but potentially Fort Smith.

Enterprising Women magazine announced last month the winners of its 2016 Enterprising Women of the Year Awards recognizing women business owners, and Hoggard was honored in the “over $2 million and up to $5 million in annual revenues” category. Hoggard, of North Little Rock, says that the 2015 revenue of her six restaurants will be just above $5 million.

Hoggard’s initial venture was a tanning salon, Advanced SunSystems, the first of which she opened in 1991. She now has three salons, in Little Rock, North Little Rock and Maumelle.

In addition to her Moe’s restaurants, Hoggard has three Auntie Anne’s (pretzels) locations, in a Walmart in Searcy, a Walmart in Benton and a co-brand location with Cinnabon at the Outlets of Little Rock.

Hoggard opened her first Moe’s in 2004 in North Little Rock and her most recent shop in Rogers in April 2015. She loves the Moe’s brand, a fast-casual restaurant with a focus on Southwestern fare, and feels good about her restaurant success, but said she had to learn some hard lessons.

Although she had retail experience, Hoggard said, “I had never worked a day in my life in a restaurant, even when I was young. … So I clearly was not prepared for what I was getting into, even though I’d owned my own business for several years at that point.”

The restaurant business, she says, is “an entirely different animal, and I was not prepared at all, so I’ve had a lot of bumps in the road — a whole lot actually.”

Her North Little Rock shop was the first Moe’s west of the Mississippi, “and there was absolutely zero brand name recognition” at the time she opened the restaurant, Hoggard said.

At that time Moe’s, based in Atlanta, was owned by Raving Brands. “We didn’t have a lot of advertising dollars from corporate,” she said. “The franchisor at the time offered almost no support.”

In 2007, Focus Brands — also home to Carvel, Auntie Anne’s, Cinnabon, McAlister’s and Schlotzsky’s — bought Moe’s, and support to franchisees greatly improved, Hoggard said.

Among her lessons: the thinness of margins in the restaurant business. “You have to be relentless” in controlling costs, she said.

Hoggard also wishes that she had hired an experienced restaurant manager at the very beginning. She and her partner at the time — Hoggard and her husband bought out the partner in 2010 — thought they “needed to be the day-to-day managers because we needed to learn the business. What we didn’t realize is there was so much room for very costly errors there … . We should have brought in a seasoned restaurant manager from Day One.”

Then came the Great Recession. Hoggard said the downturn forced her to become a better restaurant operator. “Our business had survived in spite of my lack of industry-related experience, but 2008 changed everything,” she said in an email addendum to our telephone conversation last week. “It was a matter of survival: I knew if I could make it through the lean times, we would come out on top when the economy bounced back.” And so she has.

Hoggard said she loves the Moe’s brand — no freezers, no microwaves, emphasis on fresh — and is excited to be growing the brand again in Arkansas.