When Stacy Brown first came up with the idea to sell homemade chicken salad from home, she had no idea what a massive hit it would be.
In fewer than three years, her home business would bloom into The Chicken Salad Chick, easily one of Auburn's most popular and fastest-growing restaurants.
Brown said she initially started the business as a means for survival.
"It was after a divorce where I had been a stay-at-home mom, and I realized that I was either going to have to take a 9 to 5 job or try to figure out something I could do from my house to still be with my kids," Brown said.
The worst thing that could happen to her children, she said, was having not only their family split up, but also having the mother they knew disappear as well. Brown said she was desperate to figure out a way to make money at home to avoid changing her children's lives as much as possible.
She then started playing around in the kitchen to figure out something that would sell. Like with all other great ideas, her invention was born from neccessity.
"Chicken salad is something that a lot of people like, but nobody wants to make. It takes a lot of time to make chicken salad," Brown said.
It was something that people could appreciate because they would not have to make it themselves, and it would still be homemade, Brown said.
Using her friends and neighbors as taste-testers and a paper menu printed off from her computer, she started going door to door to spread the word about her take on a classic product. Her current husband, then family friend, Kevin Brown helped her figure how much she needed to sell to make ends meet.
Then one day she had the idea to set a bowl of her chicken salad in the teachers' lounge at Ogletree Elementary School. It was a hit with the teachers, she said, and once word got out about Stacy Brown's chicken salad, she started taking more orders for it.
That single act of publicity proved to be key in her eventual success, and soon she was selling lightning in a bottle, or in this case, chicken salad in a tub.
"It was really growing extremely fast," Brown said. "We had all this interest in the course of only six weeks. Kevin and I started talking about how this could possibly be a restaurant, but that would be crazy, because it would only sell chicken salad."
All good things must come to an end, however, and a call from the health department ended her days of door to door sales.
It was illegal to cook something in her home and sell it for profit, they said, so she would have to close shop. After she was shut down, it was back to square one. Either she had to find another job to support her family, or she could try to turn her expertise into a restaurant.
Ultimately, she and Kevin decided it was worth a shot, and they found a small building with a drive-through window on Opelika Road. The Chicken Salad Chick opened Jan. 7, 2008, and the rest was history.
Kelsey Smith, junior in communication disorders and Spanish, has worked at the original location since March and discovered the restaurant when she was a freshman.
"With Stacy and Kevin, we know exactly what they expect of us all the time, and we hold each other accountable," Smith said. "I absolutely love it. I've had a lot of jobs and this is definitely my favorite."
Jessica Klaussen, junior in psychology, has worked at the same location since February and said she agrees with Smith. All of her co-workers are friends, she said, and she hangs out with many of them outside of work.
"It's really upbeat, and I've just never met a group of people that can work together so well," Klaussen said. "Everyone works together, everyone picks up the slack and they're all so nice. Kevin and Stacy are incredible."
With new customers rolling in every day, they decided to open an express drive-through on South College Street to help alleviate some of the traffic, Brown said. However, a second location wouldn't be enough to satisfy all of their hungry customers.
A third restaurant is scheduled to open in Opelika the first week in July. It will be located on Frederick Road in the Shoppes of Midtown shopping district.
Even though managing the restaurant has evolved into a full-time job, Brown said she never has to worry about missing out on time spent with her children.
Knowing how important it was to her that she not disappear from their lives, her husband Kevin tackles the longer business hours so she can spend time with them.
"In my kids' eyes, I'm still a stay-at-home mom," Brown said. "I'm able to put them on the bus in the morning and see them when they get home in the afternoon."
He's a wonderful business manager, she said, and in the meantime she manages the creative process of running the restaurant.
"Neither of us could do this by ourselves," Brown said. "Each one of our strengths complements the other, and the business really benefits from that."
Because the restaurant is unique to Auburn, people who live here introduce it to visitors from out of town, which led to multiple requests by customers to franchise across the state and beyond.
Brown and her husband have received requests to start the restaurant in Birmingham, Montgomery and Tuscaloosa, as well as Athens, Ga., Columbus, Ga., Atlanta and various cities along the beach. They have even had requests to extend the franchise as far as Ohio to Texas to Little Rock, Ark., but Brown said she wanted to concentrate on branching out in the Southeast and grow outward.
"I think it's neat that we've been in business long enough that Auburn students are now on the list to expand the franchise across the country," Brown said.
Each major step that's happened to the restaurant along the way, Brown said, was simply their response to serve a demand.
"We've been so excited that we've been received so well."
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