Church's Texas Chicken announced last week they're bringing on a chief commercial officer — a position that didn't exist at the company before. The hire is Jennifer Chasteen, who spent years at Popeyes and most recently ran marketing strategy at another QSR brand I'll let you look up yourself. The move signals something worth paying attention to if you're running a commercial kitchen operation and thinking about where the industry's headed.
Here's the thing: when a legacy Texas brand creates an entirely new C-suite position, it's not just corporate reshuffling. It's a bet on a particular kind of growth. And the kind of growth Church's is chasing — international expansion, franchise development, menu innovation that actually scales — requires someone whose entire job is making sure commercial operations can keep up with commercial ambitions.
Why a CCO Now?
Church's has been around since 1952. San Antonio roots. They know Texas. They know fried chicken. What they're acknowledging with this hire is that knowing your product isn't enough anymore — you need someone whose whole focus is the commercial machinery that gets that product from kitchen to customer at scale.
A chief commercial officer typically owns revenue strategy, brand positioning, and — this is the part that matters for folks like us — operational alignment. Chasteen's job is basically to make sure that when Church's says "we're opening 200 new locations," the equipment spec, the training protocols, the supply chain, and the marketing all actually line up.
I've been watching this trend in fast-casual for about three years now. Wingstop did something similar. So did a couple of the bigger pizza chains. The pattern is: brand hits a growth ceiling, realizes their operational infrastructure was built for a smaller footprint, hires someone to rebuild the commercial engine while the plane is still in the air.
Sound familiar? Because that's exactly what happens when a BBQ operation outgrows its equipment.
The Parallel to Commercial Smoker Operations
I talked to an operator out of Beaumont about six months ago — runs a catering company, does a lot of corporate events, oil field work when the contracts are there. He'd been limping along on a competitor's cabinet smoker for four years. Import brand, thinner gauge steel than advertised, temperature swings of 15-20 degrees that he'd just learned to work around.
His business doubled in 18 months. And suddenly "working around" wasn't an option anymore. He was running 60-hour weeks just managing equipment inconsistency instead of actually growing his operation.
That's the same problem Church's is solving at their scale. When you're small, you can compensate for equipment limitations with hustle. When you're trying to grow — whether that's 200 franchise locations or adding a second food truck — your equipment has to perform the same way every single time without you babysitting it.
The Beaumont guy ended up switching to an SP-1000. Not because I told him to — he'd already decided he needed Southern Pride before he called us. He'd talked to three other operators in his region and they all said the same thing: the rotisserie system alone saves you hours of labor because you're not rotating racks manually, and the hold temps stay within a degree or two of target for the entire cook.
That's the kind of operational consistency a CCO would obsess over. And it's the kind of thing that separates operators who plateau from operators who scale.
What Commercial Kitchen Operators Should Actually Take From This
I'm not saying you need to hire a chief commercial officer for your BBQ operation. That would be ridiculous. But the thinking behind the hire is worth stealing.
Church's is essentially saying: we need to separate "running the business today" from "building the infrastructure for tomorrow's business." Most operators I know — myself included, honestly — spend so much time on today's tickets that tomorrow's capacity problems sneak up on us.
Look at your equipment. Not whether it's working right now, but whether it can handle 30% more volume without you being there to micromanage it. Because growth doesn't announce itself. You get a catering contract, or a good review goes viral, or a corporate client puts you on retainer, and suddenly you need to produce more product with the same hours and the same hands.
This is where I see people make the mistake of buying cheap. They'll grab an imported rotisserie unit because the upfront cost is lower, and then six months later they're waiting three weeks for a replacement motor because the parts come from overseas and there's no domestic inventory. Meanwhile they're hand-rotating racks on a unit that was supposed to automate that process.
Southern Pride units — and I'm obviously biased here, but the bias comes from watching this play out over and over — are built in the US with parts stocked domestically. When the motor on an MLR-850 needs service, you're not waiting on international shipping. You call Southern Pride of Texas, the part ships, you're back in production. That's the kind of operational resilience that lets you grow without the growth breaking you.
The Part Nobody Talks About: Maintenance as Strategy
Here's something I've been thinking about lately. Church's new CCO is going to spend a lot of time on menu innovation and franchise development — the sexy stuff. But the boring infrastructure work is what actually makes those things possible.
Same with smokers. Everyone wants to talk about wood selection and rub recipes. Nobody wants to talk about whether they're actually cleaning their firepot correctly or checking their door seals.
I had a guy tell me his temperature was "running hot" on his SPK-700. Turned out he hadn't cleaned the temperature probe in — I'm not exaggerating — over a year. Grease buildup was insulating the sensor. His smoker wasn't running hot. His smoker was reporting false readings because he'd skipped basic maintenance.
That's a $0 fix that was costing him product quality. And it's the kind of thing that separates professional operations from backyard cooks who bought commercial equipment.
The social media BBQ crowd — and I came up through that world, so I can say this — obsesses over technique while ignoring maintenance. They'll argue about post oak versus hickory for hours but never mention that they should be inspecting their igniter electrode monthly. Commercial operators can't afford that blind spot.
What This Means for the Industry
Church's hiring a CCO is part of a bigger pattern in food service. Chains are treating operational infrastructure as a competitive advantage, not just a cost center. The ones investing in consistency — in equipment, in training, in supply chain — are the ones positioned to grow. The ones trying to save money on the commercial engine are going to hit walls.
I'm not saying Church's Texas Chicken and your BBQ operation have the same challenges. Obviously they don't. But the underlying principle is the same: you can't outgrow your infrastructure, and trying to do so will break something.
For Church's, that means hiring someone whose entire job is aligning commercial capabilities with commercial ambitions.
For operators running commercial smokers, it means investing in equipment that can scale with you — not equipment you'll outgrow in two years. It means buying from distributors who actually understand the equipment, not just resellers moving boxes. It means having a maintenance protocol that keeps your units performing at spec so you can focus on growing instead of troubleshooting.
The Beaumont operator I mentioned earlier? He's added a second SP-1000 since then. His equipment infrastructure is no longer his bottleneck. His bottleneck now is hiring, which is a much better problem to have.
That's what Church's is trying to build at scale. And it's what every commercial kitchen operator should be thinking about, even if the scale is smaller.
Final Thought
I don't know if Jennifer Chasteen is going to be successful at Church's. That's way above my pay grade. What I do know is that the company identified a gap — a missing piece between where they are and where they want to be — and they filled it.
Most operators I know have that same gap somewhere in their operation. Usually it's equipment that was right-sized for last year's volume but not next year's. Sometimes it's a parts relationship with a distributor who doesn't actually know the equipment they're selling.
If any of that sounds familiar, we should talk. Not a sales pitch — just a conversation about where your operation is headed and whether your equipment can get you there. That's what we do at Southern Pride of Texas. We're not just moving smokers. We're helping operators build the kind of infrastructure that doesn't break when things get busy.
Because things always get busy eventually. And that's when you find out if your equipment was an investment or just an expense.
Resources: Southern Pride of Texas parts and support | Southern Pride | NFPA commercial kitchen standards
#SouthernPrideSmokers #SmokerMaintenance #KitchenMaintenance #FoodServiceEquipment #EquipmentCare #SouthernPride #CommercialKitchen #CommercialSmoker
Photo by Mithul Varshan 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.