The parent company of mid-Missouri’s popular Champs Chicken has been named by Inc. Magazine as one of the fastest-growing privately held companies in the nation for nine straight years.
The company is PFS Brands, the parent company of Champs Chicken and Hangar 54 Pizza. Company founder and chief executive officer Shawn Burcham spoke Saturday on 939 the Eagle’s “CEO Roundtable,” telling listeners that Champs Chicken started selling chicken breading out of a garage in southwest Missouri’s Willard in 1999. Burcham credits hiring great people for the success of PFS Brands:
“We service 42, 43 states now. The only states we’re not in is the far northeast sector and Hawaii,” Burcham says.
The national headquarters for PFS Brands are in mid-Missouri’s Holts Summit, a town of about 4,700. The company also has its own transportation company, which is called PFS Freight.
Residents in Columbia, Jefferson City and across mid-Missouri who vacation in states like Florida and Colorado often find Champs Chicken at convenience and grocery stores in those states. Mr. Burcham tells listeners that Champs Chicken keeps growing:
“We’re about 400 locations with that particular brand across the country. Our company is a larger scope than that. But that is the concept that we started out of our garage (in Willard) back in 1999,” says Burcham.
Burcham says 65 percent of Champs Chicken locations nationwide are convenience stores, like 35 percent are supermarkets. The company credits its rapid growth to a culture that thrives on making retailers successful. You can hear host Fred Parry’s full interview with Shawn Burcham here.