A chicken chain that recently opened a satellite office in Atlanta's trendy West Midtown now has a new CEO. Krispy Krunchy Chicken, the largest chicken chain you've never heard of, Tuesday named industry veteran Jim Norberg as its new CEO with outgoing CEO Dan Shapiro remaining with the company as its Chairman of the Board of Directors.
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| Jim Norberg with scissors, Dan Shapiro to his left |
Jim Norberg joined Krispy Krunchy Foods, LLC as its COO in March 2022. Norberg held that role for one year before being named the company's President this past March.
Norberg, a more than three decade veteran of McDonald's, relocated to metro Atlanta in July 2019 when he was named Chief Operating Officer (COO) at Papa John's, which itself had relocated its headquarters to The Battery Atlanta from Louisville.
Established in Lafayette, Louisiana in 1989 and with a menu centered on mildly Cajun-spiced fried chicken and all-white meat tenders, Krispy Krunchy Chicken operates only a handful of freestanding locations but has become the de facto choice for convenience store operators. In total there are about 2,900 locations nationwide, the overwhelming majority of which are located with convenience stores. By comparison, Atlanta-based Chick-fil-A operates more than 3,000 restaurants but traces its roots to 1946.
Whereas Chick-fil-A is an owner/operator business, with local owners operating local stores on behalf of the company, Krispy Krunchy Chicken is a licensing business where operators pay the company licensing fees to utilize the brand's logo, marketing, and other proprietary products. This difference has enabled the company to grow exponentially with 481 units having opened in 2023.
In addition to convenience stores - Krispy Krunchy Chicken was wildly popular at the NACS Show in Atlanta this past fall - the company is also expanding into both supermarkets and large format retailers. The company opened its first unit within a Walmart in Phoenix in 2022 and currently has about ten locations open within Walmart stores with at least one more planned for an existing store in Cape Coral, Florida. In several cases, Krispy Krunchy Chicken has been brought in to backfill space left by other brands like Subway.
ToNeTo Atlanta attended the ribbon cutting of the new Atlanta office (1000 Marietta Street) in January at which time we were able to speak with both Shapiro and Norberg. When asked if the new Atlanta office was a "corporate relocation," Shapiro said no - that they just found metro Atlanta to be a good hub to both attract new talent and maintain an operations center. Many of the company's employees work remotely and while the existing office in Alexandria, Louisiana will remain open, the new Atlanta office houses team members from across the organization in IT, HR, finance, marketing, sales, and operations.
According to the Krispy Krunchy Chicken website, the company has several dozen locations in the greater metro Atlanta area including those in Atlanta, Doraville, Marietta, Smyrna, Austell, Duluth, Lithonia, Lithia Springs, Acworth, College Park and East Point, among others.
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