Predominantly franchised, with a corporate base; heavy international master-franchise activity as Texas Chicken.
Church's spent a decade shrinking; in 2025 it stopped. The U.S. system added 12 net units to 885, sales rose to $862M and AUV climbed to $1.138M — the third consecutive year of AUV improvement off a ~$1.0M base. That is a genuine stabilization, but it should be read for what it is: Church's is a value brand with roughly one-eighth the unit volume of Chick-fil-A, operating in trade areas where the consumer is most exposed to price. The international pipeline (600 units in China, 900 across Europe and beyond) is where the unit growth story actually lives.
Cap rate
Wide of the category — small-box, value-positioned franchisee credit trades at the high end of the franchisee QSR band (6.85%+ benchmark)2
Church's is the lowest-AUV of the major national chicken brands at $1.14M, which sets a hard ceiling on rent. Sites are typically small urban infill boxes rather than suburban pads, and rent-to-sales discipline matters more here than in any other brand in this database.
| Announced | Market | Commitment | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | China3 | 600 units | Multi-year |
| 2025 | Europe and beyond3 | 900 units planned | Near future |
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| Date | Type | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Closure | United States (14) — 12 units ceased operations, one franchise agreement terminated and one corporate restaurant closed — against 26 openings.1 |
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What it means for the Chicken Wars: 885 U.S. stores entering 2026 and a third straight year of AUV growth off a ~$1.0M base. Church's has stopped shrinking. It remains the lowest-volume national chicken brand by a wide margin, which caps what any Church's site can pay in rent — underwrite accordingly.
What it means for the Chicken Wars: The U.S. system grew by 12 units in 2025. The international pipeline is measured in hundreds. For a value-positioned brand with a $1.1M domestic AUV, that allocation of ambition is entirely rational — and it tells U.S. franchisees where the franchisor's attention is going.
Every figure on this page is attributed. CSW does not publish estimates as facts — where a number is unavailable it is shown as “—”, and where a figure is derived arithmetically from two published figures it is marked as derived.