Dive Brief:
- Bloomin’ Brands appointed Mike Spanos to CEO of the company, effective Sept. 3, Bloomin’ Brands announced Monday. Spanos joins from Delta Air Lines, where he led the company’s operations and customer experience teams as COO.
- The restaurant company is working to improve customer experience to help turnaround stagnant same-store sales growth across most of its brands, including Outback Steakhouse, Bonefish Grill and Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse.
- Spanos’ experience leading CX is part of why Bloomin’ Brands tapped him for the CEO role. “He has a customer-first mindset for leading established organizations through challenging environments,” Michael Mohan, Chairman of the Board for Bloomin’ Brands, said in a statement Monday.
Dive Insight:
Bloomin’ Brands is putting a premium on better dining experiences as part of its strategy to return to sales growth, and Spanos’ history at Delta helps prepare him to lead the turnaround.
Outback Steakhouse, Bloomin’ Brand’s flagship restaurant chain, is emphasizing consistently good experiences as one of its three areas of focus, according to outgoing Bloomin’ Brands CEO David Deno.
“We know that consistently delivering great food and service is the key to driving same-store sales growth,” Deno said during a Q2 2024 earnings call earlier this month.
Some CX metrics are already on the rise at Outback. Customer satisfaction with consistency of experience was up 5% year-over-year, according to Deno. Scores for friendly service were 2.9% higher than Outback’s casual dining peers.
Spanos could have the bona fides Bloomin’ Brands needs to accelerate its CX push. He helped Delta become one of the top-ranked airlines for customer satisfaction, though the company has recently faced backlash from mass delays due to the industry-wide CrowdStrike outage.
Delta’s overall CX success is driven by a change management strategy that focuses on finding where experiences are falling short, then applying technology to fix the problem. Delta has emphasized reliable service in recent months, which lines up with Bloomin’ Brands’ goals.
