Qdoba customer story highlights (2:00)

Grab a burrito, settle in, and learn how Qdoba Mexican Eats revamped its security and network with cloud-delivered magic. It’s a spicy story: Qdoba’s support costs alone have been slashed by over $300,000 per year, while security posture and uptime are dramatically improved.

“When Qdoba is connected, we are protected with Cisco Secure.”

– Gary Burgess, Director of Infrastructure and Security, Qdoba

Picture this: Qdoba, a rapidly growing and friendly chain of Mexican fast-casual restaurants, had been outsourcing its network to a third party for years. The legacy situation was a tangled web of multiple vendors, firewalls, access points, switches, and Wi-Fi controllers. As Qdoba grew, managing this hodgepodge became … in a word … challenging. The result? Higher operational costs, more downtime, and lost revenue. Not exactly the ingredients that one master chef, Gary Burgess, Qdoba’s Director of Infrastructure and Security, had in mind.

But Gary had a brilliant idea: replace the chaotic legacy security stack and network with a modern, centrally managed, cloud-based solution. Gary saw value in bringing networking and security in-house to regain control over the day-to-day operations and strategic technology decisions.

So, what did the team working in Qdoba’s networking and security kitchen whip up? A tightly integrated Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) solution — Cisco Umbrella and Meraki SD-WAN — that delivers efficiency, unified networking and security, and simplicity.

Gary remarked: “We looked at using Cisco Umbrella and Meraki together because the whole product is better together and allows us to manage the network and the security solution from one dashboard. We can simply and easily manage things like SSL inspection, sandboxing, and web URL filtering … which means better savings because we can react quicker.”

Now, only two people are required to support the new network, and the team can pinpoint and address issues rapidly. Gone are the days of an outsourced team struggling for days to troubleshoot problems. Now, most issues are resolved in mere minutes. That’s faster than you can say “Extra guac, please!”

As new restaurants are opened, the security and networking stack is pre-provisioned, saving costly site visits. And the biggest win for Qdoba has been the increased network uptime, which means more happy customers. Gary raves about the benefits of Cisco’s cloud-delivered security that contributes to uptime: “Cisco Secure makes our solution more resilient … Cisco’s security service edge addresses avenues of attack because it scans and controls data download before it gets to our end users.” As we wrap up this tasty account of SASE transformation, Qdoba’s recipe for success is reducing costs, improving efficiency, and providing a seamless customer experience. The power of Cisco Umbrella and Meraki SD-WAN together creates a winning combination that empowers Qdoba to react quickly, secure their network, and delight their customers with every bite.