The comments go to both corporate and the managers?

Yes. But the most important person is the manager because I can’t make the change in the restaurant. They can. It’s a mistake I think many make in monitoring guest experiences. It’s got to be at the restaurant level.

What were some of the store-level strengths revealed through the G.E.M. program?

The scores on our food—quality, temperature, taste—are stunning. So that is, first and foremost, the strength of our brand. I’ve challenged our managers to get the other scores to match the food scores.

Where is the brand weak?

Service. We need to have service that is as distinctive as our food in every respect: speed, hospitality, accuracy. Your experience has to be bright and shiny every time you come.

What is Popeyes doing to help managers boost those customer-service scores?

We’re in the process of implementing in all of our restaurants the tools and technologies—headsets, timers, the basics—which we had in about half our restaurants when I came here.

We’ve had good training materials, but we’re really driving it up a notch. We’ll go systematically through every market of the country and retrain our service proposition in the next six months.

Who is paying for these upgrades?

The owners are responsible for buying the equipment and training their people and driving improvement.

That’s really what I believe is magical about a franchisor/franchisee partnership: If we give them the right menu and marketing, the right operational tools, then their part is running that restaurant to the best of their abilities.

What prevented stores from investing in some of those basics in the past?

We hadn’t made it a priority. In fairness to our franchisees, I don’t think we ever made it a priority.

Which explains why Popeyes regular ranks at the bottom of our Quick-Service Drive-Thru Performance Study.

Our restaurant operators are hustling. They are working hard to get you that great food as quickly as possible. But without systems, without tools, without training, it’s not reasonable to expect they can pull that off.

Your team says you are a big fan of metrics. Why?

I love when our VP of Operations, Horace Williams, says, “You can move what you measure.” He said that the first day I joined the company, and it’s never left my mind.

The beauty of metrics is it’s no longer an emotional conversation or franchisor telling franchisee what to do. It’s fact based. The truth is right out in front of you. It shows that we have great operators, average operators, and poor operators so you can decide who you want to be on that spectrum. And it empowers the people who can make the change to make the change.

Now that a G.E.M. score is posted on the wall of every restaurant at Popeyes, everyone has the opportunity to be great. It’s not about me harping on it. It’s about seeing the opportunity and moving their own numbers.

I believe every operator wants to be great. Metrics allow them to focus on the things that make a difference. We show them the sales potential of being great. It’s very powerful if you’re in this business to make money. The top 10 percent of our G.E.M. scores operate 4 percent higher comp sales than the bottom 10 percent.