Church’s Chicken Goes Back to Basics to Drive Double-Digit Sales Growth

“There’s some brands that sometimes lose their way and they start innovating outside of their core. We lean into the chicken.”

—Roland Gonzalez, CEO, Church’s Texas Chicken

Ask anyone in a Southern state if they’ve had Church’s Texas Chicken and you’ll probably get a weird look. It’s like asking any American if they’ve tried McDonald’s. Of course I have, they’d say; haven’t you?

“I love that chicken,” a Lyft driver said on the way to the Atlanta headquarters of Church’s. He always gets the tenders paired with a jalapeno dipping sauce.

Church’s is a Southern staple. The franchise targets lesser-served communities, which keeps rents down and profits high for operators. Menu prices are kept low; a Church’s restaurant might be one of the only places left where customers can get a decent meal for less than $5. A “two-piece feast” meal with two pieces of chicken, a honey butter biscuit, dipping sauce and a grilled jalapeno runs just $3.49.

“A lot of our guests in the areas where we are in, they’re minorities. They are trying to stretch a dollar, so us being there for them and having a good menu architecture—that does that,” said CEO Roland Gonzalez. “Some folks are trying to hit five- or six-dollar price points. Church’s is hitting $3.50 price points.”

Families get the deals, too, with a 10-piece dinner with two large sides and biscuits for less than $20. (Similar meals at KFC and Bojangles run closer to $30 in the Atlanta market.) “Families are a really big, important component to us, especially in the evenings,” Gonzalez said.

Church’s, which goes by Texas Chicken internationally, is No. 55 on the Top 400 list. It’s up six spots from last year. The company reported $1.6 billion in systemwide sales in 2024, an increase of $165 million or 11 percent year over year. That’s after the brand grew sales by 12.5 percent in 2023.

“We have a best-in-class executive team. It’s allowed us to build the credibility with our franchisees. We could not have done those numbers without our franchisees,” Gonzalez said.

Overall growth slowed in the chicken category last year but it still generated nearly $80 billion in sales. Wingstop had a monster year at $4.8 billion, while fast-growing Dave’s Hot Chicken pushed sales up 56.6 percent, to $636 million from 259 units, to lead the segment.

Church’s is in refresh mode, and up first is what Gonzalez called “phase one,” in which it’s changing up the look and feel of its restaurants. Newly opened stores are doing $200,000 to $300,000 more than the average unit volume of just over $1 million, he said.

Phase two is accelerating growth with reimages, increased digital sales and improved operations. “Our teams are better trained. Guest satisfaction is higher,” Gonzalez said.

Church’s has not increased its prices recently, so that 11 percent sales growth comes from an increase in traffic, which Gonzalez said is up 4 to 5 percent.

Existing franchisees continue to add stores, but the majority of development is from operators new to the system. As it expands outside core markets, such as with its entry into Philadelphia this year, Church’s is able to reach profitability with lower AUVs.

“We have a unique ability to go where maybe another brand wasn’t successful, because they need higher AUVs to be successful,” he said. “It’s more attractive for people to take risks and go into new markets like that.”

Church’s ended 2024 with 1,573 units worldwide, up 2.8 percent from 2023, and about 43 percent are located outside the U.S. Church’s has a significant presence in Malaysia and Mexico. Gonzalez expects the brand to double its international presence, which last year hit 684 restaurants, in “just a few years.”

The brand’s supply chain team has been “critical” for international development, Gonzalez said, because franchisees need food orders that are streamlined and cost effective. Church’s has deals signed for about 1,000 units internationally, and it’s set to open in five new countries this year, including Jamaica and Germany.

The brand has a significant number of corporate stores (175, or about 11 percent of its unit count), and Gonzalez said the company is re-evaluating that ratio. Church’s is talking with its established franchisees who might be interested in buying some of those company-owned restaurants. But Gonzalez is careful about refranchising and balancing it with development commitments.

“We’re definitely looking at finding the right franchisees to come and strike deals to where they can take some of these company restaurants on but with large development agreements,” he said.

Modernizing a legacy

George W. Church Sr., a retired chicken incubator salesman, founded Church’s Texas Chicken in 1952 in San Antonio when he was in his 60s. Two pieces of chicken and a biscuit cost 49 cents. By the time he died in 1956, the brand had four locations.

When the company named Gonzalez, the former chief operating officer, as CEO in February after Joe Guith’s departure for CKE Restaurants, he wanted to do right by George Church’s legacy.

But modernizing a brand seven decades old comes with its share of challenges, so Gonzalez is taking a slow and steady approach. When he started working at Church’s in 2023, the brand’s digital sales hovered around 5 percent of total sales. It’s set to finish 2025 with about 16 percent of sales coming from digital channels. The Church’s rewards app, launched in 2024, has about 1.3 million users as of August.

“Our fans were just hungry to engage with us through those channels,” Gonzalez said. The next digital venture is catering, which makes up less than 1 percent of sales.

Over time, Church’s diverted from its original recipe to cut costs, Gonzalez said. One of the brand’s longest-tenured franchisees, Mario Sanchez, said he missed the brand’s original recipe. “We found that original recipe in Puerto Rico and then we put that back into our chicken,” Gonzalez said.

While staying true to its roots, Church’s also acknowledges the importance of menu innovation.

Its Smokehouse chicken, a limited-time offering this summer, came from head chef Kevin Houston’s love for slow-smoked chicken. “I wanted to be able to get that flavor into our restaurants,” Houston said. The brand sells an original and a spicy version.

“They both have a smoky marinade. The spicy version gets a spicy, zesty shake-on seasoning. Think of it as one of your favorite hot sauces in dry form,” Houston said.

But don’t expect to see hamburgers on the Church’s menu any time soon. “There’s some brands that sometimes lose their way and they start innovating outside of their core,” Gonzalez said. “We lean into the chicken.”

Doing all this without raising prices is an impressive feat, and it’s almost unheard of today with heightened labor costs, inflation rates, tariffs and an uncertain economy.

“When prices would go down, we would lock in those prices for six or 12 months ahead, so our franchisees knew what to expect,” Gonzalez said. “Then if we run a promotion, we don’t have any other variables that surprise us. That’s been really important.”

‘We lost our way’

Noor Samji, an 11-unit franchisee in Arizona, appreciates the brand’s return to the basics.

“One of the things was to go back to simplifying the operation. Let’s go back to what Church’s used to be,” Samji said of recent developments. “We have added all these other layers. Let’s peel them all off and then let’s go back to the basics. I think that was the key that really turned things around.”

Samji worked at Church’s as a district manager before becoming a franchisee. “I was very lucky. I got an opportunity to buy one in Casa Grande, Arizona,” in 2005, said Samji. Since then, he’s added a mix of new builds and existing stores to his portfolio. In August, he signed a deal to open his 12th store.

Throughout his career as a Church’s franchisee, Samji said the brand changed hands a few times. “We lost our way. We wanted to be Popeyes. We wanted to be Chick-fil-A,” he said. “We were trying to get away from being a Church’s.”

High Bluff Capital Partners, the private equity firm that also owns Quiznos and Taco Del Mar, bought Church’s in 2021. A couple years later, Gonzalez came on board as Church’s retooled its executive team. Other new additions were Chief Financial Officer Danton Nolan and Chief Marketing Officer Navin Sharma.

“Then Roland came in and their group came in and said, ‘Let’s go back to the basics,’” Samji said. “Let’s go back to everything the way it was and that’s how things started getting better for us.”

He keeps that theme of sticking to the basics in his operations. His restaurants’ success comes from three simple standards: quality, service and cleanliness. “If you don’t have that, you can bring in all the marketing, you can do everything. It doesn’t matter,” Samji said. “It’s all about our employees. They make us successful.”