The life of pie

MANILA, Philippines - When you hear the title Chief Operating Officer (COO), it’s almost natural to visualize a very busy man who’s extremely hard to catch because he’s in meetings all the time; someone who can hardly afford the time to regularly indulge in personal hobbies and interests because of the demands of his job, let alone enjoy an hour-long, uninterrupted lunch without having to attend to urgent business matters that may crop up unexpectedly.

Yellow Cab Pizza Co. COO Roy Quejada who oversees the operations of the fast casual restaurant of almost a hundred branches here and abroad. The man behind the innovative, New York-inspired great pizza destination is very much a well-balanced and highly-admired career and family man.

“I said ‘yes’ to Yellow Cab because I was really fascinated with the brand. I used to frequent its St. Francis Square branch in Ortigas for my slice of their New York’s Finest,” he revealed. Aside from his love of their products, another deciding factor was his strong belief in Yellow Cab’s market potential. 

Known as one of the individuals who played an instrumental role in revitalizing the brand, Quejada is also a key driving force behind the transformation and improvement of Yellow Cab’s operations. Under his watch, training procedures of employees were standardized and diagnostic tools that help determine solutions to management and training issues were provided.

For Quejada, the key is to identify the problem and what needs to be done to address it. “My approach is to keep it simple: identify the issue, study it from all angles, lay out your options, and choose the one that produces the best result given the limitations of your circumstances.”

And when it comes to people management, Quejada clearly values relationship , with a commitment to build, nurture, and strengthen ties within the company—among bosses, colleagues, and subordinates—and, externally, with its partners and stakeholders.

This relationship-centric philosophy is something he experienced with and learned from his first Yellow Cab bosses, founders Eric Puno and Albert Tan. “Being able to speak with the actual owners of the restaurant was a big deal for me. I liked being able to tell them my ideas and opinions,” he enthuses. The same, he says, goes for his dynamics with Yellow Cab’s new owner, Pancake House Group chairman Martin Lorenzo.

Quejada shares that one of the exciting things in the works for Yellow Cab is its new campaign called Great Times, Great Pizza. “It’s all about having Yellow Cab to celebrate all your special moments with you, whether it’s a promotion at work, a birthday or anniversary, or a simple reunion with friends you haven’t seen in a while,” he declares. “Through this campaign, we want to be more ‘in touch’ with our customers and form better and stronger ties with them. We want Yellow Cab to be a destination that sparks recall of some of their most cherished memories, a place they would keep coming back to because of such a connection to the brand.”