For Church’s Chicken, fast food gets faster

Church’s Chicken is taking speed to another level in the fast-food business.

The Atlanta-based chicken chain unveiled Wednesday in Lawrenceville a new store concept — a modular restaurant that can be plopped down, assembled and running in less than three days.

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CURTIS COMPTON / ccompton@ajc.com

‘In our business in fried chicken, we need to watch the pennies all day long,’ CEO Harsha Agadi said. ‘This is how we deliver value to our customers.’

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CURTIS COMPTON / ccompton@ajc.com

Mike Reagin of Madison Industries lowers the first half of the Church’s Chicken modular restaurant onto its foundation in Lawrenceville.

• Photos: Church's new restaurant takes shape

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The new store also will cut about 20 percent to 30 percent of the construction cost compared to a traditional restaurant, Church’s said.

The modular restaurant adds speed and savings to Church’s as it pushes for growth in a competitive market, said Harsha Agadi, Church’s president and CEO.

“In our business in fried chicken, we need to watch the pennies all day long,” Agadi said. “This is how we deliver value to our customers.”

The first of the new modular restaurants arrived with great fanfare to a Lawrenceville shopping center off New Hope Road.

About 50 Church’s franchisees flew in from around the United States to check out the concept. Lawrenceville Mayor Rex A. Millsaps declared the day Start Up a Franchise, Start Up the Economy Day.

Alvin Shah, franchisee for the new Lawrenceville location, was the first franchisee to buy in. His new store was delivered to the site in two pieces on flat-bed trucks.

With the rain coming down, he watched Wednesday from a tent as a crane lowered the second piece and construction workers began attaching it to concrete pillars in the ground.

“I couldn’t sleep last night,” said Shah, eager to see his new store delivered.

Shah isn’t sure how soon his store will be open. Construction shouldn’t take much longer, but he still needs to pass a final inspection from city officials.

“As long as the mayor is on my side, I hope it’s not too long,” Shah said.

Madison Industries, based in Los Angeles, built the restaurant at its Conyers facility. Frey Moss Structures, based in Conyers, also is working with Church’s on modular units.

The idea of a modular restaurant is not new. Madison Industries built more than 300 modular units for Church’s in the 1970s and 1980s, said Mike Davis, a Madison vice president. The company hopes the latest concept leads to a new generation of modular outlets, he said.

While the term modular might conjure up images of mobile home trailers, the restaurants are solid, Church’s, Madison and Frey Moss all said. In fact, Church’s expects lower insurance premiums on the buildings because they’re built with steel and concrete, not wood.

“This is not a mobile home,” Davis said. “This is a commercial structure.”

Modular buildings are a popular choice for a wide range of businesses, said Tony Adams, a Frey Moss sales engineer on hand for the unveiling. His company has built medical centers, restaurants for Checkers and Rally’s and gas stations for BP and Murphy’s.

“You’ve probably been in our buildings or someone else’s buildings and not even known it,” Adams said.

Church’s officials said they see several advantages for the modular restaurants. The cost is $225,000 to $250,000, or about $50,000 less than a restaurant built from the ground up.

They can be depreciated faster than traditional restaurants, providing tax advantages. An energy management system is expected to cut utility costs by 10 percent and refurbished equipment is being used to cut those costs by 50 percent.

The speed of construction allows the unit to be running and making money faster, Church’s officials said. A traditional ground-up building can take 70 days for construction.

The ability to move the structure also is appealing, Agadi said. If a market shifts to a different location, the store can too, he said.

“What you have is a greater mobility to respond to the changing economic demographics,” he said.