Church's Texas Chicken just signed a deal to open somewhere around 100 locations across China. That's not a typo — a hundred units in a market that, until recently, didn't have much appetite for Southern-style fried chicken or anything resembling Texas flavors. And here's the thing: this isn't really a fried chicken story. It's a signal about what international markets want from American food right now, and it has implications for anyone running a BBQ operation back here in the States.
I've been watching these international expansion moves for years. Not because I'm planning to open a brisket joint in Shanghai — I'm plenty busy keeping my truck running along the Gulf Coast — but because where the big money flows tells you something about consumer taste shifts before they show up in your local market.
Why China, Why Now
The Chinese market has been notoriously difficult for American food brands. KFC cracked it decades ago and became almost unrecognizable compared to U.S. locations — serving congee, egg tarts, all kinds of localized menu items. McDonald's has been there forever. But the second and third tier of American chains? They've struggled.
Church's is betting that the appetite for specifically Southern and Texas-style flavors has finally arrived. Not just "American food" as a generic category, but regional American food. Honey-butter biscuits. Jalapeño bombers. The stuff that tastes like it came from somewhere specific.
That's a meaningful shift.
For BBQ operators, this should register. The same forces pushing Chinese consumers toward Texas-branded chicken are pushing American consumers toward more authentic, regional experiences at home. The era of generic "barbecue" — where you could slap some liquid smoke on anything and call it smoked — is fading. People want specificity. They want to know your pitmaster's name, where you source your wood, what region's tradition you're following.
Actually, let me back up. That's partially true. The backyard crowd on social media definitely cares about all that. Restaurant customers? They care about whether it tastes good and whether they're getting value. But — and this is the important part — they're increasingly able to tell the difference between real smoke and fake smoke, between a place that runs real pits and a place that's reheating Sysco product.
What High-Volume International Expansion Actually Requires
Opening 100 locations in China means Church's needed to answer some serious production questions. How do you maintain consistency across that many units? How do you train staff who've never worked with these flavor profiles? How do you build a supply chain for ingredients that aren't native to the region?
These are the same questions any BBQ operator faces when scaling up — just compressed into an extreme scenario.
I was talking to a guy last month who runs three BBQ restaurants in Louisiana. He started with one location, built his reputation on brisket and ribs, then expanded to a second unit about forty minutes away. The second location nearly killed him. Not because of demand — demand was fine — but because he couldn't maintain quality across two kitchens using the equipment setup he'd started with.
His original location ran on a competitor's smoker. I won't name the brand, but you'd recognize it. Rotisserie style, decent capacity, got the job done when he was doing maybe 200 pounds of meat a day. When he opened the second location, he bought the same model, figuring consistency meant using identical equipment.
Here's what he didn't account for: his first unit was three years old. He knew its quirks. He'd learned to compensate for the hot spots, the door seal that leaked a little, the temperature swings when you loaded it heavy. His second unit was brand new and behaved completely differently — and then six months in, it started developing its own quirks, but different ones.
He ended up calling me because he was looking at upgrading both locations to Southern Pride units. Specifically the SP-700, which could handle his volume at either location with room to grow. The consistency question was the whole reason for the switch. When you're running multiple locations, you need equipment that behaves the same way unit to unit, year after year.
The Value Menu Reality
Something else is happening in the restaurant industry right now that connects to this Church's news. Value menus are driving frequency at QSR chains more than almost any other factor. Chili's is launching chicken sandwiches specifically positioned as McDonald's alternatives. Taco Bell keeps bringing back Nacho Fries because they move volume. CAVA just added salmon — a premium protein — but they're still anchoring their traffic on build-your-own bowls at accessible price points.
The push-pull between premium positioning and value accessibility is constant.
For BBQ operators, this creates an interesting tension. Real smoked meat isn't cheap to produce. You're looking at significant cook times, fuel costs, labor for monitoring, and yield loss from trimming and rendering. You can't really compete with a $5 value meal, and you shouldn't try to.
But you can compete on perceived value. A customer who pays $18 for a two-meat plate needs to feel like they got something they couldn't get anywhere else. That's where equipment consistency becomes a business issue, not just an operational preference.
If your brisket varies significantly from Tuesday to Saturday because your smoker can't hold temp reliably, you're training customers to gamble when they visit. Sometimes they get the good stuff. Sometimes they don't. That's not a value proposition — that's a lottery ticket.
The SP-500 we run on my truck holds within a few degrees of target for the entire cook. I've tested it. I've run it in July humidity and January cold snaps. The rotisserie system means I'm not worrying about which rack is cooking faster than the others. This sounds like a small thing until you've spent a season apologizing to customers because you pulled a brisket an hour too early from the top rack while the bottom rack was still stalling.
Scaling Without Losing Your Identity
Look — Church's going into China with 100 locations is an extreme example. Most of us aren't thinking about international expansion. But the underlying challenge is the same whether you're opening your second location, adding weekend catering to your restaurant operation, or just trying to handle the Saturday rush without running out of product by 2 PM.
The question is always: how do you increase volume without sacrificing what made people come to you in the first place?
For some operators, the answer is compromising on process. Shorter cooks. Lower quality cuts. Holding cabinets that turn beautiful bark into soggy disappointment. I get why people go this route. Production pressure is real.
But I've seen the other path work better. Investing in equipment that can actually handle the volume you're targeting — not the volume you're doing today, but where you want to be in two years.
The SP-1000 and the larger production models exist specifically for operators who've outgrown mid-size units. I've watched catering operations try to run three or four smaller smokers simultaneously instead of stepping up to a single high-capacity unit, and the coordination headache alone costs them more than the equipment difference would have.
And here's something the backyard crowd never thinks about: parts availability. When you're running a commercial operation and something breaks at 4 AM before a Saturday rush, you need parts that day. Not next week. Not "we'll check with the manufacturer." That day. Southern Pride's domestic manufacturing and parts distribution — available through distributors like us — means you're not waiting on container ships from overseas or hoping some third-party supplier has your gasket in stock.
I know operators running Ole Hickory units who've been down for days waiting on parts. The equipment itself isn't terrible — Ole Hickory makes decent smokers — but the support infrastructure just isn't there the same way. When your operation depends on that smoker running, the purchase price is almost irrelevant compared to what downtime costs you.
The Bigger Picture
Church's Texas Chicken opening a hundred locations in China is a bet that American regional food has international legs. Whether that bet pays off, I genuinely don't know. International expansion is full of examples that looked obvious in hindsight and others that seemed sure to work but didn't.
What I do know is that the same forces driving that expansion — consumer appetite for authenticity, regional specificity, real flavor instead of processed approximations — are operating in every market, including wherever you're reading this from.
The operators I see succeeding right now aren't necessarily the ones with the fanciest restaurants or the biggest social media followings. They're the ones who figured out how to produce consistent quality at volume, day after day, without burning out their staff or compromising their product.
That's an equipment question as much as it's a technique question. Maybe more.
If you're running a mid-volume restaurant and thinking about expansion, or a catering operation that's outgrowing your current setup, the conversation about equipment needs to happen before you sign that second lease or book that contract. The MLR series for mobile operations, the SP-700 for high-volume single locations, the production-scale units for serious throughput — these are decisions that shape what's actually possible for your business.
Church's figured out their production model before they announced 100 locations. The scaling came after the systems were in place. That order of operations matters.
Resources: Southern Pride of Texas | QSR Magazine | Restaurant Business Online
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Photo by Valeria Boltneva on Pexels.
About the Author: Travis operates a competition BBQ team and a Gulf Coast food truck, and documents his commercial cooking process for food service professionals.