Cheryl Bachelder is passionate about two things: leadership and fried chicken. The 56-year-old CEO of Atlanta, Ga.-based AFC Enterprises, franchisor of New Orleans
inspired fast-food chain Popeyes, oversees 2000 restaurants in 25
countries with system-wide revenues of nearly $2 billion. Since coming
to Popeyes in 2007 from rival KFC, she’s helped the chain outpace
competitors in the chicken segment for 18 consecutive quarters,
dramatically increase its stock price and rapidly grow its footprint.When she’s not cooking up new strategies for the 40-year-old brand, she’s racking up leadership awards (2012 Silver Plate Award and Women’s Foodservice Forum’s Leader of the Year) and writing about leadership lessons on her blog The Purpose of Leadership. She sat down with me to discuss the new direction of Popeyes, how she got here, and why she advises women to stop trying so hard to fit in. A condensed version of our conversation follows.
Jenna Goudreau: You’ve said you want to double the number of Popeyes restaurants in the U.S. What’s behind the aggressive expansion plan?
Cheryl Bachelder: This year in the U.S. we’ll build more restaurants that are free-standing drive-throughs than just about anyone in the quick-service restaurant category, except McDonald’s. We are in the rapid growth sector of our industry because our units are performing. New units are opening at $1.5 million in annual sales, which is 50% higher than five years ago. It means the people making investments get great return, and it’s a natural incentive to build more–70% are built by existing franchise owners.
The stock has climbed from a low of about $5 in late 2008 to an average of $26 in the last few months. How did you turn it around?
We’re blessed to have a distinctive brand from Louisiana. We’re all about flavor with a touch of comfort food. We like to say: Everyday should have a little Mardi Gras in it. But we’d stopped talking about the things that made the brand special. In the last few years, we’ve gone back to the roots to bring it to life in a relevant way. We renamed the brand Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen. We’ve done some menu innovation with new products like Wicked Chicken, Rippin’ Chicken and Dippin’ Chicken, which are flavorful and portable. With the combination of great new menu items out of our heritage, a strong spokesperson and a dramatic increase in our media spending, the awareness of our brand has more than doubled.
You have a strong background in food, working at Nabisco, Domino’s Pizza and most recently at Popeyes’ rival KFC. What attracted you to the industry?
My early career was in packaged goods at Procter & Gamble and Gillette. I fell in love with food at Nabisco. It’s a wonderful blend of art and science. You have to do it on a large scale, but there’s a lot of art in the innovation and finding the flavors. My love for retail food was a turning point in my career. It’s a wonderful environment to practice innovation, influence and leadership, with a business model that’s so much more complex. To get something done at Popeyes, I have to influence 300 owners and 60,000 people. It’s far more challenging. You also get quick feedback. One day you’re great; one day you stink. I love the speed.
As one of few female CEOs, what do you credit to your business success?
I give a lot of credit to my family. I’m the oldest of four children from a good Midwestern farm family. Everybody worked hard, we valued education, and my parents emphasized integrity in our decision-making over ambition, which is a value mindset missing in many of our leaders today. My parents raised four CEOs. I don’t think that was an accident.
How has that upbringing influenced you as a leader?
Our schools are very good at developing skills but are less successful at building value sets around how you do business. It’s much harder to teach values, so you have to model them in the way you lead. [You have to] be prepared to make courageous decisions that demonstrate your values, where you make the harder choice and not the easier choice.
What’s an example of a courageous decision you made?
To be a parent. Because if you really knew what was coming, I wonder how many of us would do it. I’m the mother of three daughters, who are now 26, 21 and 19. Children don’t come with a handbook; you learn as you go. Parenting is very courageous, hard work, and I’m a big fan of taking it seriously.
I frequently speak with businesswomen who are trying (and sometimes failing) to figure out the work-family juggle. How did you approach it?
It’s very difficult–for mothers and fathers. Recently one of our team members’ kids had a health crisis in the middle of our earnings call. It’s difficult to know what to do when you’ve committed to work obligations and then real life shows up. I left a board meeting once because my daughter was in a car accident. At that moment, I didn’t give a rip about the board meeting. I cared about getting to the scene of the accident and being available to her.
Work-life balance is fraught with difficult choices. We need to encourage women to be confident to make the right choice–because we don’t always get a pat on the back if we walk out of a meeting to take care of a sick baby. We have to be confident and courageous in our choices. I think as women have demonstrated this in the workplace, the workplace has become better for men. It’s enabled them to make family decisions that they’ve wished they could make. The workplace is better off for us opening up this conversation and being respectful toward one another.
What’s your best advice for the next generation of women coming up behind you?
The thing I wish I had learned at a younger age is the importance of bringing your authentic self to your leadership and your workplace. Women spend a lot of years trying to figure out: What do I have to do to make these people happy? What do I have to wear? How should I talk? What behaviors are expected of me? We spend all our energy trying to give them what they want. It totally distracts us from our best selves and coming to work with something to offer. Acknowledge your talents, and as quickly as possible gain confidence in yourself, so that you can be a genuine, authentic contributor and not all that worried about what other people think.
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