Popeyes chief: ‘You do not have to fit in a cookie-cutter’

One good mentor can make all the difference.

Just ask Cheryl Bachelder, CEO of AFC Enterprises, the Atlanta-based franchisor of the Popeyes fast-food chain. Bachelder's business education began with years of dinner table discussions with her father, a corporate executive. Not only did that experience help propel Bachelder's career, but her three siblings are also business leaders today in different industries.

Bachelder, 57, has spent much of her career trying to turn around tired brands for companies like P&G, Gillette, Nabisco, Domino’s Pizza and KFC. Five years ago, she took the helm at Popeyes, when its fried-chicken brand and operations were struggling. Today, systemwide revenue — totaling about $2 billion for AFC and the franchisees operating more than 2,1oo restaurants — is growing after Bachelder refocused the company’s marketing and menu on its Louisiana roots.

Bachelder talks about what she learned from her most important teacher, as well as how she goes about rebuilding a tarnished brand. She also has suggestions for women trying to climb a slippery corporate ladder.

Q: Your father prepared you for the corporate world. How?

A: His teaching really enabled my career. My dad was the vice president of manufacturing for National Semiconductor, which was revolutionizing electronics when it moved from the transistor to the integrated circuit to the chip. He was a make-it happen executive.

In my family life, he brought it all home to the dinner table and taught us the lesson of the day. “Today, I installed a new accounting system. Here’s how it went. Today, I had to lay off people. Here’s how it went.”

Dinner was all about the lessons of competency and character of running a business.

At times, he had (to deal with) an integrity problem. They used gold to manufacture chips. Periodically, someone would steal gold. He made it crystal clear to us that you had to act with urgency and courage to take out the bad apple, even at a very high cost to the operation short-term.

When he worked through one of these issues, there would be life threats. When he was based in Singapore running plants in Asia, he would send the family home to the U.S. for 90 days for safety.

Q: What did your father teach you about having difficult conversations with people?

A: He had good instincts. He would recognize when someone was not the leader he needed for an initiative, and that he needed to make a change.

But he would sweat it. He would be physically ill. He would stay up the night before, worrying about the person’s family and how to get them on to the next opportunity. He took every one of those tough people decisions as if it was a family member.

That taught me an awful lot of how you work with people in difficult times. You have to be sensitive to what their needs are. You also have to tell them that the business need has changed. You must be honest with them about that.

But you also have to be human and care. He taught me that that was possible.

In manufacturing plants and in restaurants, the environment you create for the employee determines the quality of the product and the service. If those people are not happy campers, if they’ve not been trained, if the systems don’t work, there’s not a prayer that the customer will get a good experience.

Q: What did you learn from moving a lot as your father’s assignments changed?

A: We moved 11 times during my childhood. I learned how to find a new way to get involved in my school. It was character forming for me because I learned how to land on my feet.

I am very quick to live where I live. I don’t spend a lot of time in transition. With me, it’s find your neighborhood, find your book club, find your church, find your community activities and find your friends as fast as possible.

In my life, my friendships are usually in the here and now. I don’t have lifelong friends who I grew up with. My husband has those. It makes me a little bit of a nomad, but with a strong family.

I have a gregarious, outgoing personality. I like change. My husband laughs that when I live somewhere for more than three years, we have to change all the paint in the house, because I have to freshen everything and make it new again.

Q: You’ve been called on to refreshen brands that were struggling throughout your career, which is a critical issue faced by many business leaders. What did you learn?

A: I've had bumps in the road and failures like everybody does. I analyze them, figure out the lesson and we are moving forward. I spend very little time commiserating. There is no great benefit chewing up energy in "woe is me."

To build a brand, you have to find the essence — the functional benefits and the emotional attributes. All my brand experiences have been about taking something tired and off its game and making it relevant and compelling again.

It’s much harder to rebuild a brand because it has baggage. A new brand is hard to build, but it’s pure. There is no baggage.

I love unraveling the essence from the baggage and then pushing off, making it fresh again with product innovation. For example, with Life Savers candy, the consumer was in love with the memories they held about the candy, but not with the candy. They remembered grandma gave them one at church. It was a very emotional brand, but consumers weren’t eating them any more.

So we created a campaign about the precious moments of sharing a Life Saver. And we married that with new product innovation — Gummi Savers. We built a $100 million business overnight and made the brand more relevant with young people.

At Popeyes, we immediately came to the idea of going back to our Louisiana roots. Then we created food that spoke to our heritage like wicked chicken. All of our new product innovation has been driven out of a Louisiana perspective.

Q: No Fortune 500 firm based in Georgia is led by a woman. What’s your best advice for women trying to advance in their companies?

A: Women struggle to be comfortable in their own skin. They're trying to figure out how to do business in a man's world. I love to coach women to bring their authentic selves to work. You do not have to fit in a cookie-cutter.

I keep a book (by Derek Newton) over there on my shelf — “Think Like a Man, Act Like a Lady, Work Like a Dog.” That means — get prepared for the marketplace, be authentic and don’t expect shortcuts.

We look for people who are fact-based, humble and accountable. Never be a victim.

Also, I believe messaging is the most underrated skill of a senior executive. You need to be able to write a concise, compelling memo when you need a decision to be made. The first paragraph should cover the decision you are asking for, if there is any money attached to the decision and the time frame the decision has to be made in.

My husband says that if I wrote “War and Peace,” it would be two paragraphs and you’d know everything you needed to know. It’s a messaging skill that I use today like crazy.