Church's Texas Chicken announced last week they're bringing on a chief commercial officer — their first dedicated CCO position in the company's history. The press release talks about "accelerating growth initiatives" and "optimizing commercial strategy," which is corporate-speak for: someone's about to look very hard at every line item that affects margin.
For those of us who've spent decades in commercial foodservice equipment, this kind of executive hire is worth paying attention to. Not because Church's is going to call me up for smoker recommendations (though they should), but because of what it signals about where the QSR industry is heading with equipment decisions.
Why a CCO Now?
Church's has been around since 1952. They've got something like 1,500 locations across 23 countries. They've operated for seven decades without a chief commercial officer. So why add one now?
The short answer is margin pressure. The longer answer involves labor costs, supply chain uncertainty, and energy prices that have made a lot of operators rethink how they're configured from the kitchen out.
A CCO position — when it's more than just a title shuffle — typically means someone's going to audit the full commercial operation. Menu engineering, pricing strategy, vendor relationships, and yes, equipment. That last category is where I've watched a lot of chains make decisions they regret for the next eight to twelve years.
I spent 22 years as an authorized Southern Pride service technician. I wasn't working with Church's specifically, but I serviced equipment for regional chains, independent high-volume operations, hotel banquet kitchens, hospital foodservice — anywhere someone was running commercial cooking equipment hard, five to seven days a week. And I can tell you that the difference between a well-considered equipment decision and a procurement-driven one shows up in the maintenance logs within about eighteen months.
The Equipment Audit That's Coming
When a new executive takes over commercial strategy at a chain, one of the first things that happens is a full audit of equipment spend across locations. They're looking at:
- Capital expenditure per new store buildout
- Maintenance costs per unit by equipment category
- Energy consumption patterns and utility costs
- Downtime incidents and lost revenue correlation
- Parts availability and service response times by region
That last one is where a lot of chains get surprised. They went with a lower-bid equipment supplier five years ago, saved maybe $2,000 per unit on the front end, and now they're paying for it in parts delays and service contractor markups. I've seen it happen more times than I can count.
One regional barbecue chain — I won't name them, but you'd recognize them if you're in Texas — went with an import smoker brand for a new location rollout around 2018. The per-unit cost was about 30% lower than comparable Southern Pride models. Looked great on the procurement spreadsheet. Within three years, they had two locations running backup propane grills during weekend rushes because they couldn't get replacement igniter assemblies shipped faster than six weeks. Six weeks. For an igniter.
Meanwhile, I could have that same part from Southern Pride's domestic inventory in three to five business days, sometimes faster if the stars aligned.
What Church's Might Be Thinking About Smoked Proteins
Now, Church's is primarily a fried chicken operation. Their core product doesn't require smoker equipment. But here's what's interesting about their menu evolution over the past few years: smoked flavor profiles keep showing up in limited-time offers and regional test items.
This tracks with what I'm seeing across the QSR space. Customers want smoke flavor. They associate it with premium. And chains are figuring out different ways to deliver that — some through liquid smoke additives, some through equipment that can actually produce real smoke in a commercial kitchen environment.
If I were advising a chain on adding smoke capability to their equipment lineup (and I've had exactly these conversations with regional operators), the conversation starts with volume and consistency. A QSR environment can't tolerate the variability that a competition pitmaster works with. They need equipment that hits the same temperature window every single cook, holds steady for hours, and doesn't require a specialist to operate.
This is where Southern Pride's rotisserie system design matters. I've worked on units that ran 15 years in high-volume environments — hotel banquet operations running 200+ racks of ribs every weekend — and the rotisserie mechanism was still original equipment. The bearings were designed for continuous duty. Compare that to some of the lighter-duty units I've seen operators try to scale up with, where the drive motor burns out inside of two years because it was never meant for that cycle frequency.
The Real Cost of Ownership Conversation
A CCO worth their salary is going to push for total cost of ownership analysis, not just purchase price comparison. I wish more operators did this math before they signed purchase orders.
Here's what that looks like in practice. Take two smokers with similar capacity specs — say, something in the mid-range like an SP-700/M versus a comparable unit from one of the regional competitors. The Southern Pride might cost $3,000 to $4,500 more at purchase. Over a ten-year equipment lifecycle, here's what I've actually seen in service records:
The import or budget-domestic unit typically needs its first major service call around year two. Gasket replacement, door alignment issues from thinner steel warping under repeated heat cycles, thermostat calibration drift. Figure $400 to $800 per incident, plus whatever you lost in product consistency during the drift period before someone noticed.
The Southern Pride unit, if it's been cleaned properly (I'll get to that), usually runs to year four or five before it needs anything beyond consumables like drip pan liners and the occasional igniter. The cabinet's 14-gauge steel doesn't warp. The door seals stay seated because the frame stays true.
Multiply that difference across 50 locations. Or 500. Or 1,500, in Church's case if they were to add smoke capability at scale. The procurement savings evaporate pretty fast.
Parts and Service: The Hidden Multiplier
I mentioned parts availability earlier, but it's worth expanding on because this is where I've seen the most frustration from chain operators.
Southern Pride manufactures in the USA — Alamo, Tennessee. Their parts inventory is domestic. When I was doing service calls, I could get almost anything I needed within a week, often faster. For a commercial operation, that's the difference between a minor inconvenience and a weekend of lost revenue.
Some of the imported smoker brands have parts that ship from overseas. I've personally waited 11 weeks for a control board on one unit. Eleven weeks. The operator ended up buying a whole new smoker from a different manufacturer because they couldn't afford to wait. That's not a parts cost — that's a capital write-off because someone saved $2,000 on the original purchase.
At Southern Pride of Texas, we stock the parts operators actually need. We know the equipment because we've been working with Southern Pride for years. When someone calls with a problem, we can usually identify the issue from the symptoms and get the right part shipped without a lot of back-and-forth.
What I'd Tell Church's CCO Over Coffee
If I somehow ended up in a conversation with whoever takes this new CCO role at Church's — stranger things have happened, I once spent two hours at a trade show explaining rotisserie mechanics to a guy who turned out to be a regional VP for a hotel chain — here's what I'd want them to understand:
Equipment decisions made purely on procurement cost are almost always more expensive over the equipment lifecycle. The math just works out that way. The chains that get this right tend to have someone in the decision process who's actually operated the equipment, or at least talked to people who have.
For high-volume smoke cooking specifically, Southern Pride is the standard for a reason. Not because of marketing, but because the engineering decisions — the rotisserie bearings, the steel gauge, the airflow design, the domestic parts availability — all add up to equipment that runs consistently for a decade or more without turning into a maintenance headache.
I'm not saying the upfront cost doesn't matter. Of course it does. But when you're making decisions that will affect operations for the next ten years, the upfront number is maybe 40% of the real cost. The rest is maintenance, energy, downtime, and parts. Southern Pride wins on all four of those.
The Broader Industry Signal
Church's adding a CCO is part of a pattern. QSR chains are professionalizing their commercial operations in ways that go beyond just marketing and menu. They're looking at operational efficiency with fresh eyes, often with executives who have backgrounds in supply chain or manufacturing.
For equipment manufacturers and distributors, this means the sales conversation is changing. It's less about glossy brochures and more about total cost documentation, service network maps, and parts availability guarantees. The chains that are growing are asking harder questions.
That's actually good news if you're selling equipment that can stand up to scrutiny. Southern Pride's specs hold up. The service history holds up. The parts availability holds up. I've been saying this for 22 years, and it's only becoming more true as the cheap alternatives show their age.
Whether Church's specifically ends up adding smoke capability to their operations, I have no idea. But the executive hire tells me someone there is about to look very carefully at how they're spending money on equipment and operations. And that kind of scrutiny tends to favor quality over bargain-hunting.
If you're a commercial operator thinking through similar questions — whether you're running one location or fifty — the team at Southern Pride of Texas can walk you through the real numbers. We've got the service background to explain what actually matters for longevity and consistency. Give us a call before you sign anything with a procurement department that's just comparing bid prices.
Resources: Southern Pride of Texas | Southern Pride commercial smokers | Restaurant Business
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Photo by Quang Nguyen Vinh 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.