Growth
The right ingredients
How Rick Silva finds and exploits competitive advantages at Checkers Drive-In Restaurants
By Brian Horn
Smart Business Tampa Bay | March 2009
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When you look at a Checkers Drive-In Restaurant, you might see a
building that’s smaller than most of its competitors. Rick Silva
sees a competitive advantage. A potential franchisee won’t need
the same capital outlay to open a new Checkers as he or she would
for a McDonald’s, and that’s something that Silva says is a competitive advantage for him. Silva, the president and CEO of
Checkers Drive-In Restaurants Inc., which also operates stores
under the Rally’s name, is constantly studying his customers and
franchisees. “We look at those two tiers and say, ‘How do we differentiate ourselves from the competition?” Silva says. “‘How do
we set ourselves apart from the competition in those two areas?’
That goes to where our core equities are — where are we really
good at?” For instance, the drive-through restaurant chain, which
posted systemwide sales of approximately $650 million in 2007
and employs 18,000 people, offers seasoned fries that the competition doesn’t. While on the surface, something like seasoning
might seem insignificant, Silva sees it as a core advantage his company has over the competition.
Identifying those advantages and then leveraging them in your
favor are the keys to creating a vision and driving it throughout the
organization.
“When you talk about a vision, you’ve got to understand that
first,” he says. “Sometimes people jump ahead and say, ‘OK, what
is my vision for the company?’ If it’s not ground in who you are,
how you compete and what your core equities are, then it’s a nice,
intellectual, maybe even emotional experience, but it won’t yield
you much benefit.”
