Roland Gonzalez had more than a decade of industry experience on his resume, including time as EVP and chief operating officer of Virtual Dining Concepts and head of global operations standards and strategy with Burger King parent Restaurant Brands International, where he managed a team of 15 executives and oversaw 20,000 restaurants across BK, Tim Hortons, and Popeyes. But there was something different about Church’s Chicken’s whitespace.

The product—quality and value—he says, was clear. And you could see the recent, outsized effect of new leadership that made the brand feel more like a startup than a concept founded 72 years ago. “The fans of Church’s are like none other,” says Gonzalez, who joined as U.S. chief operating officer about a year and a half ago. “Our franchisees also have a ton of tenure and experience. We’re just looking at going back to who we are and who Church’s was, is, and continues to be—a brand that is a value, in the communities, and for everyone.”

This current, value-frantic climate has only helped the brand, Gonzalez continues. While many chains are racing toward a $5 point, Church’s has combos under $4. And that construct and approach isn’t a walk-back for the brand. It’s led with embedded value for decades—a fact that’s enabled Church’s to gain share as competitors ceded it, Gonzalez says.

READ MORE: Church’s Road Back Began with Finding Itself Again

However, where the runway for the brand unraveled wasn’t in equity or value standing; it was execution beyond the dollar figure. Of Church’s 901 restaurants year-end 2023, 156 were company owned. It marked a 23 store year-over-year decline following the shedding of 76 restaurants the year before and 15 the calendar prior. So Church’s U.S. footprint has slimmed 114 locations since the start of 2021.

There are some splits emerging out of that optimization that give Church’s management a roadmap to chase. Newly built franchise “Blaze” image restaurants (the brand’s updated asset) averaged sales of $1.232 million last year. General freestanding franchises with drive-thrus came in at $1.038 million; freestanding $1.149 million; end cap with drive-thru $878,113; and C-store $819,600.

Company locations, across those formats, averaged $1.073 million (versus $1.008 million for franchises in total).

With the new image, corporate builds, of which six were counted in 2023, expanded sales from $1.082 million to $1.387 million in the first year following the change, or 28.2 percent average annual gross sales expansion. It pulls to average growth of $304,845.

For franchises doing the same, the AUV leapt from $1.006 million to $1.105 million (9.8 percent, or $98,657). The top franchise-operated Blaze store made $2.021 million a year.

Gonzalez says this, at a high level, is a signal of how the brand can perform when it operates the way it’s capable of. That’s been his guidepost since arriving.

Church’s unit-level profitability approached a 40 percent increase last year for corporate owned restaurants and a threefold year-over-year lift in the number of domestic deal signings. The brand has nine franchise openings projected this year alongside five corporate stores.

Firstly, Gonzalez says, Church’s had to get there by growing its top-line sales, which it did by placing the spotlight on value. Its two-piece feast was a big win. CEO Joe Guith and leadership shored up supply to secure pricing and ensure it could hold these tiers without losing margin.

Yet there’s also been ample work done with operations, national and local, regarding procedure and initiative changes to raise standards and accountability, offer enhanced training, and bolster communications.

An example, Gonzalez says, is Church’s launch of spicy chicken. It used to dip the chicken in a spicy batter before frying. This go-around, Church’s created a glaze, which allowed it to eliminate a step and remove a SKU. The glaze, he adds, tested better with guests as well. It also saved food costs. “A triple whammy in our industry,” Gonzalez says.

This method also safeguarded supply considering the glaze was the add, not the product itself.

Gonzalez knows from experience how challenging it can be to improve operations while growing traffic. Upticks typically make it harder to do the things you were great at when you didn’t have such high peaks or so many touchpoints—like cleaning cafes and staying consistent. Ensuring it can do both is where Church’s has started to win, he says.

“Our guest satisfaction has hit a height and we are one of the few brands out there that is positive in traffic, which is really hard to do,” Gonzalez says. “At the end of the day, it’s a testament to our company employees and the franchisees.”

“Philosophically, the way I look at is, it’s the restaurant industry and whenever you go from five to 10 restaurants, the number of transactions you have a day, you’re going to have really, really great experiences and then sometimes things go wrong for one reason or the other and you’ll have bad experiences,” he adds. “The key is how to lower that variation.”

When Gonzalez arrived, as noted before, the variation at Church’s was rather high. There were some restaurants performing at the top end and there was a long tail delivering poor experience. Gonzalez approached that gap through accountability.

The canyon between the high and low annualized gross sale freestanding Church’s with a drive-thru last year was $2.763 million and $284,415, respectively. For freestanding, it was $2.578 million and $427,812. Gonzalez says there are some more recent Blaze openings in Houston averaging double the system’s typical AUV.

He notes Church’s, more widely, was a brand slow to emerge from COVID. Guith, a former GoTo Foods executive, arrived in early August 2022. Results began to flow in 2023.

Gonzalez says management 7X-ed the number of times it visited restaurants last year than the prior 12 months. It ramped up third-party assessments of restaurants and improved Church’s guest feedback platform so it could gather data faster and put it into the hands of operators. Gonzalez says it was like “turning the light on.”

The company is now conducting business information meetings where each franchisee gets at least two per year. Additionally, there are town halls where Church’s gathers DMAs so operators can share best practices. The company also hosts a convention. On top of those engagement channels, Church’s began hosting webcasts.

“Part of it was communication,” Gonzalez says. “Part of it was touchpoints. Letting the franchisees know the data—there was a gap. And so, by turning the lights on, as I like to say, and people understanding where the opportunities were, we’re able to fix them while guests were coming in.”

Customers have noticed this real-time effort, he notes. The food is faster and hotter and it’s led to a flywheel effect of sorts that’s generating momentum.

When Gonzalez came onboard, he looked at the franchise survey Church’s conducted internally as well. At the end of 2022, it was about 5 percentage points below industry benchmarks for operators’ satisfaction and engagement with the brand. It ended last year 5 percentage points above, he says. “To move just 1 or 2 points is a lot,” Gonzalez explains. “The company that does the survey was like, ‘what’s going on there?’ And one of the highest things they rated, that improved, was the executive leadership team.”

A more recent update was the launch of Real Rewards, a fresh program for Church’s that began by giving away chicken for a year to 500 guests. The platform is designed to align with Church’s strengths—the ability to serve abundance at speed. There’s a reward to get 15 pieces of chicken in one order. For each $1 a rewards member spends (in-store, online, or via the app), they receive 10 points. Everybody who signs up gets a free chicken reward they can redeem for a two-piece leg and thigh or three-piece tender meal as their first purchase. Then it ladders up in tiers.

Sides and Extras

• 250 points can be redeemed for a regular classic side, dessert or 22 oz drink

Real Meals (Chicken Only)

• 500 points can be redeemed for a 2PC Leg & Thigh or 3PC Tenders or Chicken Sandwich
• 750 points can be redeemed for a 3PC Leg & Thigh or 5PC Tenders

Real Meal Combos

• 1,000 points can be redeemed for a 2PC Leg & Thigh or 3PC Tenders or Chicken Sandwich

Real Meal Combo

• 1,250 points can be redeemed for a 3PC Leg & Thigh or 5PC Tenders Real Meal Combo

For the Family (Chicken Only)

• 1,500 points can be redeemed for 8PC Legs & Thighs
• 2,000 points can be redeemed for 12PC Legs & Thighs
• 2,500 points can be redeemed for 16PC Legs & Thighs

Real Rewards users receive automation promotions, too, such as a free dessert, side, or 22-ounce drink with any purchase for their birthday and sign-up anniversaries. Throughout the year, surprise member-only rewards, including day-of-week deals and access to new and test items, will also be available.

To say this is a sizable shift from recent history would be a comical understatement. The app simply wasn’t working in 2023, the company said previously. This custom skin and CRM platform evolves Church’s digital journey from bouncing off the floor (gaining sales simply through better fundamentals) to something with the potential to unlock lifetime value from its best customers. “We feel like we can double our digital sales in short order, which will only improve the profitability, make restaurants’ lives easier,” Gonzalez says. “It will give the guests the experience they’re looking for.”

He adds to expect more new news coming out of Church’s throughout the year, like the Tender Wraps in introduced in June at $2.29.

“We’ve done a lot of these things just by executing our existing products better,” he says. “The way we’ve been able to do it is to actually improve the operations [such as with spicy chicken].”

Church’s developed a complexity tool that sets a baseline of what it should be in-restaurant. If it adds a product, operators can see how long it takes to cook, hold, etc., on a back-end algorithm that will lay out the process. “Marketing and operations working very closely in an objective way to make sure that anything we do is to make the restaurants’ lives easier,” Gonzalez says.

“Our guests, for lack of a better word, are hungry for the brand,” he adds. “Especially in our home state of Texas, but we’re seeing that all over the country—Omaha, Nebraska, you name it, we’re doing really, really strong with new openings.”