Church's Texas Chicken announced last month they're rolling out a dedicated catering program across their Texas locations, starting with the Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth markets. If you've been running catering operations for a while, you probably saw this coming. Every major QSR chain has been eyeing the catering dollar for years now — Chick-fil-A built a small empire on it, Popeyes followed, and now Church's wants their cut.
The press release talks about "authentic Texas flavors" and "convenient group ordering." What it doesn't mention is that they're going after the same corporate lunches, church functions, and weekend events that independent operators have been handling for decades. And they're doing it with brand recognition, national marketing budgets, and the kind of pricing that comes from massive supply chain leverage.
So what does this actually mean for you?
The QSR Catering Playbook Is Predictable
I've watched this pattern repeat since Subway started pushing their party platters in the early 2000s. A national chain identifies catering as an underutilized revenue stream. They build a streamlined menu — usually 8 to 12 items that translate well from their existing operations. They invest in online ordering infrastructure. And then they compete primarily on convenience and price.
Church's will probably do this competently. Their fried chicken travels reasonably well (better than most fast food, honestly), and they've got the Texas branding angle working for them. For a 50-person office lunch where nobody cares that much about the food, they're going to look attractive. $6 per person, everyone knows the brand, done.
That's the market they're targeting. And here's the thing — you probably don't want that market anyway.
The corporate lunch where procurement just needs calories in a room by noon? Let them have it. The profit margins on those jobs barely justify the logistics. I've talked to operators who spent years chasing that volume business, and most of them eventually realized they were working twice as hard for half the money compared to higher-end events.
Where Independent Operators Actually Win
Church's isn't going to show up with a smoker trailer at a wedding. They're not doing a 200-person rehearsal dinner with customized sides and service staff. They can't handle the Saturday afternoon company picnic where someone wants whole hog and expects you there for six hours.
Real catering — the kind that builds your reputation and generates referrals — requires equipment and expertise that doesn't scale through a franchise model. A Church's location in Katy isn't investing in a Southern Pride SPK-1400 for weekend events. They're reheating fried chicken from their regular production line and calling it catering.
The gap between what they can deliver and what you can deliver is enormous. But only if you're actually equipped to exploit that gap.
Equipment Flexibility Is Your Competitive Moat
I spent over two decades servicing commercial smokers, and one thing I noticed consistently: operators who invested in versatile, reliable equipment handled market shifts better than those who cut corners. When your competition is a national chain with standardized production, your advantage is doing things they literally cannot do.
A rotisserie unit like the SP-1000 or SP-1500 gives you options that no QSR catering program can match. You want to run 40 chickens for a Friday corporate event? Fine. Saturday you're doing brisket for a birthday party? Same unit, different approach. Sunday brunch catering needs smoked turkey breast? Already handled.
Southern Pride's rotisserie design has always been about consistent results across different proteins without babysitting. I've seen operators run their SP-700 for 14-hour days during peak catering season — the kind of sustained production that would destroy lesser equipment. The USA manufacturing matters here. When you're pulling 60+ events during wedding season, you can't afford a breakdown waiting on parts from overseas.
(I once watched an operator try to get through October with a competitor's unit that needed a new motor. Took three weeks for the part. He lost somewhere around $15,000 in bookings. That stuck with me.)
The Service and Quality Argument
Church's will compete on price. You compete on everything else.
When I talk to successful catering operators, they rarely mention price as their primary selling point. They talk about reliability — showing up when they said they would, with food that matches or exceeds expectations. They talk about flexibility — handling last-minute headcount changes, accommodating dietary restrictions, adjusting service style based on the venue.
They talk about relationships. The event planner who knows your cell phone number. The corporate admin who's booked you for every quarterly meeting for five years straight. The family that's hired you for three generations of milestone events.
Church's can't build those relationships. Their counter staff rotates every few months. There's no continuity, no personal investment in making your specific event successful.
But relationships only get you so far if the product doesn't deliver. And this is where equipment quality becomes a real competitive factor, not just something I say because I spent my career working on Southern Pride units.
Hold Temps and Transport Realities
Catering is fundamentally a temperature management problem. You're cooking food in one location, transporting it, and serving it in another — sometimes hours later. Every link in that chain is an opportunity for quality to degrade.
Southern Pride's cabinet smokers (the SC-100 and SC-300, both gas and electric versions) hold temps within a few degrees over extended periods. I've tested units that held 185°F for eight hours with less than 4 degrees of variance. That matters when you're doing the overnight cook, loading at 6 AM, and not serving until noon.
The rotisserie units maintain similar consistency. The SPK-500/M and SPK-700/M have become popular with smaller catering operations because they can run efficiently at partial capacity — you're not firing up a massive unit when you've only got 15 pounds of meat to move.
Compare that to some of the imported equipment I've seen operators try to use for catering. Temperature swings of 25 or 30 degrees. Hot spots that turn the bottom rack into charcoal while the top is barely done. Parts that fail after 200 hours of use because the steel was too thin to handle repeated heating cycles.
Ole Hickory makes a decent product, I'll give them that. But I've worked on enough of their units to know the parts situation isn't great. When something goes down, you're waiting. Southern Pride parts are domestically stocked, and if you're working with Southern Pride of Texas, you're talking to people who actually know what you need and can get it to you fast. That's not marketing — that's just the reality of how supply chains work.
Positioning Against the Chains
Here's what I'd tell any operator concerned about Church's or any other QSR moving into catering: stop thinking about them as competition. They're serving a different customer with a different product at a different price point.
Your marketing should emphasize what they can't do:
- Custom menus designed around specific events
- On-site cooking when the venue and occasion call for it
- Real smoked proteins with visible smoke rings and bark — not reheated assembly line product
- Personal service from someone who has a reputation to protect
If a potential customer's primary decision factor is cost per head, let Church's have them. Your time is better spent cultivating relationships with event planners, venues, and corporate contacts who value quality over savings of a few dollars per person.
The Equipment Investment Calculation
One thing I've seen hold operators back: they want to grow their catering business but they're trying to do it with inadequate equipment. Running a small cabinet smoker beyond its capacity. Using a unit that's 15 years old and held together with replacement parts and stubbornness.
If you're serious about catering — if you want to compete for the business that Church's can't touch — you need equipment that can handle volume reliably. An MLR-850 or SPK-1400 isn't cheap. But the cost of turning down a $8,000 wedding booking because you can't handle the volume? That adds up fast.
The operators I've seen succeed treat equipment purchases as investments in capacity. They calculate what additional bookings they can accept, what their closing rate is on inquiries, and what their average event revenue looks like. The math usually justifies the purchase faster than they expected.
And Southern Pride equipment lasts. I've serviced units that were running strong after 20 years of commercial use. Try that with the budget imports. You'll be replacing the whole thing in five years.
What Actually Changes
Church's getting into catering doesn't fundamentally change the market. It adds noise. It might capture some low-margin business that wasn't particularly profitable anyway. It gives your customers another option to compare you against — which, honestly, usually works in your favor when they see the difference.
What matters more is whether you're positioned to serve the customers who want real quality. Whether your equipment can handle the volume and consistency those customers expect. Whether you've built the relationships that make you the obvious choice when someone's planning an event that matters.
If you're thinking about upgrading your catering setup or adding capacity, the folks at Southern Pride of Texas can walk you through the options. They know the equipment, they know the applications, and they're not going to oversell you on something you don't need. That's been my experience with them, anyway.
Church's will do their thing. You do yours. Just make sure your equipment is up to the job.
Resources: Southern Pride of Texas | Southern Pride | National Barbecue & Grilling Association
#BBQ #TexasBBQ #SmokeMaster #BBQCommunity #CateringBBQ #BBQLife #CommercialBBQ #BBQTips
Photo by Büşranur Aydın on Pexels.
About the Author: Ray is a retired authorized Southern Pride service technician with 22 years of field experience on commercial BBQ equipment across the Gulf Coast and Southeast.