How Shawn Burcham’s innovative approach grew PFSbrands into a recognized force within the food industry.

It’s been about three decades since Shawn Burcham set a simple goal to start his own business by age 28. That was just one goal of many for Shawn, who describes himself as a lifelong and avid goal-setter. Shawn and his wife achieved that goal after launching a company out of their home garage in 1998. What he didn’t know at the time was just how momentous the accomplishment was.

His company, PFSbrands, has grown so much that it operates in more than 1,500 locations across 40-plus states. Champ’s Chicken, BluTaco, and Hangar 54 Pizza are likely familiar names to consumers. PFSbrands is the parent company of these food service brands. Champ’s Chicken was its flagship brand while BluTaco and Hangar 54 Pizza were added in 2018 and around 2021, respectively. The company also partners with distributors to sell PFSbrands’ products. Shawn is pretty transparent that he didn’t initially expect what started as a humble fried chicken distribution company to balloon into its current size or even expand beyond the borders of the Midwest.

“I feel really fortunate to have that garage story that a lot of much bigger companies have,” Shawn says. “It’s pretty cool to start in the garage and build it into some thing that you didn’t think it was going to turn into. It takes a lot of help and a lot of people; I can tell you that.”

Shawn credits much of his success to the goal-setting mindset instilled in him by his family as he grew up in Farmington, Missouri. He says he’s fortunate to have grown up with parents who stressed the importance of hard work. “I lost my dad about five years ago but was lucky to spend 49 years with him,” he says. “One of the things he told me before my first baseball practice I went to was ‘Show up earlier than everybody else, work harder, more efficiently than everybody else, and stay later than everybody else. Boy, with that type of mentality, you can do anything you want to do.’”

Shawn stuck to the southern part of the state after graduating high school, heading west to Springfield to attend Southwest Missouri State University — today known as Missouri State University — where he met his wife during his sophomore year. It was a couple of years later, just before graduation, when Shawn wrote himself a note setting the goal of starting his own business by 28. He met that target just a few months shy of his 28th birthday.

Post-graduation, Shawn worked for established companies, like Mid-America Dairymen and Hays Food Systems, Inc., while looking for opportunities to start his own business. At one point, he considered buying a jewelry store.

“Luckily, I couldn’t get the loan,” Shawn says. “I look back, and that’s really the story of my whole life. Everything happens for a reason, and I encourage everybody to think like that. Life’s 10% about what happens to you and 90% about how you react.”

There were plenty of other ideas as well, from potentially owning hardware and grocery stores to a short stint installing cappuccino and espresso machines in restaurants. Shawn eventually struck gold in the chicken distribution business thanks to a connection with an equipment company out of South Carolina. About five years in, PFSbrands began adding wholesale partners, which allowed for expanded horizons. It began distributing products in Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Kansas. Shawn says the company’s biggest leap was a later expansion to Alabama because that move showed that PFSbrands had a plan for making long-distance partnerships work.

“That’s really been our approach all across the country as we’ve leapfrogged across the Smokies and the Rockies and everywhere that we’ve gone,” Shawn says. “Our program just really needs committed retailers and committed wholesalers to make it work.”

No matter the growth, the company has never forgotten its Missouri roots. In fact, its national headquarters is located in Holts Summit, Missouri, and they became 100% employee-owned in 2017 to ensure all employees feel like they are part owners and benefit from the company’s success.

Mid-Missouri will also be the proving ground for the company’s next major evolution: an expansion into the standalone brick-and-mortar restaurant space. Columbia, Missouri, will soon be the home of the first stand-alone Champ’s Chicken location.

“It’s not like we’re starting from scratch — we’ve got 25, 26 years worth of experience with Champ’s Chicken,” Shawn says. “It’s always been a vision to make it a household name and get it into standalone models, no different than Chick-fil-A, Zaxby’s, or Raising Cane’s. Those are companies that have done a fantastic job and, quite frankly, companies that we’ve modeled ourselves after for years even though we’ve been inside supermarkets and convenience stores.”

Shawn’s practice of setting goals and chasing after them is still going strong after 25+ years in the food industry. Besides adding standalone restaurants, the company will also complete its acquisition of Mid-Missouri grocery chain Moser’s Foods in April of 2025.