Rubio’s Coastal Grill begins fresh relationship with customer experience partner SMG

KANSAS CITY, Mo. – All Remote – Service Management Group (SMG), a global customer, employee and brand experience management partner to more than 500 brands, has announced a new partnership with Rubio’s Coastal Grill. The fast casual restaurant chain specializing in Baja-inspired Mexican food and award-winning fish tacos selected SMG to improve real-time, prescriptive feedback across its guest journey.

Based in Carlsbad, Calif., Rubio’s has more than 150 locations across California, Arizona and Nevada. Co-founder Ralph Rubio opened the first location as a walk-up taco stand in 1983 in San Diego’s Mission Bay, and the brand’s reputation and restaurant count has grown steadily since. Over the years, Rubio’s has evolved its menu to include innovative recipes ranging from responsibly sourced seafood and chef-crafted tacos and burritos to California bowls and crisp, fresh salads.

“We knew we wanted a partner with restaurant-specific expertise that could bring our real-time feedback to the next level,” said Paul Nishiyama, chief operating officer for Rubio’s. “SMG proved to be our perfect match and is already helping us better understand how we’re performing against the rest of the industry, while delivering insights and best-in-class tools for our operators.”

Rubio’s is partnering with SMG to gather location-level guest feedback across its restaurants. Additionally, Rubio’s is using SMG’s online reputation management solution to measure location-specific ratings and reviews across top review sites, understand restaurant-level competitive benchmarks and engage with customers via in-platform response. Both solicited and unsolicited consumer feedback are available in real time within the smg360® platform, offering Rubio’s a holistic view of the guest experience. Role-based reporting, real-time alerts, case management and other features allow team members to close the loop with customers and focus their efforts on the actions necessary to improve overall satisfaction.

About Rubio’s Coastal Grill

Rubio’s first opened in 1983 in the San Diego neighborhood of Mission Bay. Today, Rubio’s uses responsibly sourced seafood and continues to expand its menu with innovative recipes ranging from seafood tacos and burritos to California Bowls and crisp, fresh salads. In addition, Rubio’s offers all-natural chicken, raised without antibiotics, and all-natural USDA Choice steak, “no fried” pinto beans, handmade guacamole, a variety of proprietary salsas, and craft beer and hard seltzer beverage options. The award-winning restaurant regularly receives accolades for its famous Original Fish Taco^®. Rubio’s is headquartered in Carlsbad, Calif., has over 3,000 employees and currently operates over 150 restaurants.

About Service Management Group

SMG is a leading experience management (XM) provider, accelerating value by changing how brands act on customer + employee insights. With a rich 30-year history rooted in The Service Profit Chain, SMG is the industry’s only software with a service (SwaS) provider—uniquely pairing an enterprise platform with professional services to help brands generate new revenue, grow existing revenue, reduce churn + detractors, and drive operational efficiencies. To learn more about our customer, employee, and brand experience management solutions, visit www.smg.com/.

###