JEFF AND CHELSEY FEUS

Moe’s owners serve customers and their community

story by JEANNE REYNOLDS             photos by SUSAN DELOACH

If you don’t believe two heads are better than one, you need to meet Chelsey and Jeff Feus. The Lady’s Island couple — owners of three Moe’s Southwest Grill restaurants across the Lowcountry — work better together, than, well, lime and cilantro.

Jeff has pluff mud in his blood after growing up in Savannah and Beaufort, and the restaurant business has been a common thread throughout his life. He launched his career with a degree in hotel and restaurant management from Georgia Southern University. Chelsey, meanwhile, lived in Florida, Ohio, and South Carolina, and also had the restaurant industry in her background. The two met when they were both doing stints at Applebee’s in Columbia, soon married, and decided to move to Beaufort in 2012 to purchase their own restaurant. They opened the Moe’s Southwest Grill franchise on Boundary Street that year and have steadily expanded their operations since, adding locations in Bluffton in 2015 and Port Wentworth, Georgia, in 2020.

The Feuses are quick to say they’ve been lucky with great employees and managers — “We’ve never lost a general manager in 12 years,” Chelsey says, knocking on Jeff’s wooden desk with a laugh — but they also give a lot of the credit for their success to being a visible presence in the community.

“We’re part of the local community,” Jeff says. “People sometimes look at a franchise like it’s some corporate entity, but here they see we’re locally owned and think, ‘These are people who live in our community.’ They want to support you more.”

That support was especially evident — and critical — when the pandemic hit. While many restaurants and other businesses were forced to shutter their doors, Moe’s never did. Outdoor seating, takeout, delivery orders, and “pop ups” in local neighborhoods kept the business running. Every customer during that time received a personal letter from the Feuses in their bag or box, thanking them for their support.
That’s also when Chelsey invented the Moe’s Family Meal Kit, a boxed taco dinner for four to six people, complete with tortillas, a choice of protein, and a range of toppings. The idea was so successful it was picked up by the Moe’s corporate office and is now offered at every Moe’s restaurant in the country as a regular menu item with fajita and burrito options. That innovation, along with their outstanding sales growth, customer service scores, and inspection scores, helped the Feuses win the Moe’s Operator of the Year award at back-to-back biennial national conferences in 2020 and 2022.

PASSING IT ON
The Feuses’ passion for service reaches much further than across the countertops in their restaurants, and it’s been part of their personal business model long before being pushed by the pandemic. In 2014, Jeff donned high heels and bling to compete in the Beaufort Beauties, a male “beauty pageant” that raised money for Dragon Boat Beaufort, Lowcountry Habitat for Humanity, and Healing Heroes of the Lowcountry.

“He was not an attractive woman,” Chelsey says, “especially with pink hair.” Jeff apparently didn’t excel in the formal dress or interview portions of the event, but he does boast of winning the talent competition with his “evolution of dance” performance.

Chelsey took her turn on the stage last year as a participant in Beaufort’s Dancing With Our Stars. She and her team raised $15,000 for the Child Abuse and Prevention Association (CAPA).

“It was traumatizing,” she says. “I’m not an onstage person. My daughter has performed with the Derrick Ballet for 10 years, and I called her and asked, ‘Why do people do this?!’ I really had to step out of my comfort zone.”

“She was a nervous wreck,” Jeff agrees.

Despite her jitters, Chelsey says it was important to her to support CAPA because “I couldn’t imagine what those kids go through.” That compassion for children also led her to start a Backpack Buddies program with their church, Water’s Edge United Methodist, to help provide meals over weekends and school breaks for designated students at Coosa Elementary School. Chelsey also organized a Be the Church program with monthly service days to help with hurricane relief and other community service projects, and serves on the Power of the Purse Board for United Way of the Lowcountry.

Jeff, meanwhile, is about to start his seventh year as a volunteer play-by-play announcer at Beaufort High School home football games. He’s also volunteered as a youth basketball coach at the YMCA in Port Royal and serves on the Moe’s franchise advisory council.

Each of them is an individual powerhouse in the community, but Chelsey and Jeff may make their biggest impact when working as a team. During the 2022–2023 school year, they asked teachers in the three communities where they own Moe’s restaurants to submit “wish lists” of supplies and materials they wanted for their classrooms but couldn’t obtain or afford. The Feuses filled the requests of 74 teachers for a total of $11,000. And while that’s impressive, it’s hardly unusual for them. Over the past decade-plus, the couple and their businesses have donated money and food to many local charities and organizations, such as Young Life of Beaufort, Rotary Club of the Lowcountry, CAPA, and the Beaufort Community Nutcracker dance program, donating more than $20,000 worth of equipment, travel uniforms, and other items over the years to Beaufort High School’s football program.

SETTING AN EXAMPLE
Despite the demands of three businesses in different cities, 60 to 75 employees, and two children, Jeff and Chelsey believe in setting aside time for themselves and their family. That includes regular visits to The Foundry fitness center in the Beaufort Town Center, steps away from their Moe’s location, and travel — favorite destinations include Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, and The Bahamas — as a family and as a couple.

“You have to take care of yourself first to be there for everyone else,” Jeff says. “It’s important to set a good example for our kids.”

Those kids, by the way, appear to be following in their parents’ busy footsteps. Daughter, Lily, a dancer for the past 10 years, plans to try out for some new sports teams at Riverview Charter School this school year, and son, Daniel, also a Riverview student, plays football, basketball, tee ball, and soccer. And both have been involved in some of the Feuses’ community service efforts, such as an Operation Backpack program that provides school supplies to other children who need them.

Giving back to the community and leading by example appear to be a recipe for success for Jeff and Chelsey — in business and in life.

“The amount of support we got during COVID … the community just wrapped its hands around us,” Jeff says. “We have to do the same in return.”