Many of the world's great ideas are born in high-rise offices of bustling cities or in the minds of scholars working away at research in institutional laboratories or technology campuses. For Stacy Brown, the founder of local restaurant success Chicken Salad Chick, the best ideas are simply born in the kitchen.
In 2012 the Auburn Chamber of Commerce named Brown, an energetic blonde from Rome, Ga., and Auburn alumna, because of her successful 63 Chicken Salad Chick franchises all over the South. Her recipe for success began with a modest plan and a bit of patience.
She began humbly: the mother of three, recently divorced and in need of a source of income.
"For their stability, I said, 'I've got to figure out something to do from the house,'" Brown said.
Limited to the confines of her home, Brown headed to the kitchen and was struck with an idea, or rather, a craving.
"I happened to be obsessed with chicken salad," she said. "I thought I was a connoisseur of chicken salad. I didn't make my own, I just tasted everybody's. I thought I was like a fine wine steward."
Brown started her "science experiment" in the kitchen, cooking pounds of chicken in trial and error batches of what eventually became the Classic Carol, her regular chicken salad sold in stores today.
Initially, Stacy passed around the tubs of her creation to friends, neighbors and her hairdresser. Word quickly spread about the chicken salad, and she recruited her current husband, Kevin Brown, for business advice. Kevin jumped on board, and the business was born.
Before she began to sell her creation, Brown customizing batches for friends by throwing in unique ingredients.
"This idea started to unfold and evolve. Everybody makes chicken salad differently because everyone likes it a different way," Brown said. "It's not just a one-recipe thing. Why not make one for everybody?"
Brown created four flavors, a logo and a name -- Chicken Salad Chick -- and set out door-to-door, with tubs of chicken salad in hand.
To name the flavors, Kevin suggested playing off the "chick" theme and naming them after special ladies in his and Stacy's lives. They made batches for their mothers: Stacy's mother, Nutty Nana and Kevin's, Mimi's Mix.
"Looking back, I think (the customers) thought I was pitiful," Brown said. "The important thing is, they bought it once, so whatever their reason was, I'm OK with that. They bought it again. I never felt sorry for myself and never felt pitiful. I thought I had a great idea, and I was going to go out there and sell it."
The turning point for the business came when she took a bowl of chicken salad to the teacher's lounge at Ogletree Elementary School, where her children attended. The teachers loved it, and that's when the phone began ringing off the hook with orders.
"How could you quicker get a word spread throughout a community than through the teachers, who are connected to every family?" Brown said.
Brown began making huge batches, sometimes more than 20 pounds at a time. Now, Brown said Auburn consumes an average of 500 pounds per day.
Despite that Chicken Salad Chick had a logo, Brown insists it was initially only supposed to be for a bumper sticker on her car with a phone number for people to call in orders.
Brown recalled a late-night grocery-store run when she received a phone call while sitting at a stoplight.
"It (was) someone in the car next to me, drunk as all get-out, saying, 'I want some chicken salad,' like I was Willie's Wings or something."
Suddenly, the health department called after an anonymous source revealed Brown's in-house chicken salad business. The department explained it was illegal for her to cook something in her home and sell it. Brown put production to a halt.
This fact didn't seem to deter hungry customers. Brown said people would call her, begging her to make them just one order.
"I felt like I was bootlegging chicken salad," Brown said. "It felt like a dirty thing in the back parking lot."
Despite the apparent success of her product, the health department shutdown left Brown deflated. After all her hard work and the option to stay home with the kids, she feared returning to a full-time job and disappearing from their daily lives.
Kevin, fortunately, had a plan. He figured there was enough success for them to open a small, inexpensive takeout-only location to cook and sell the chicken salad - a place that Brown, who had no business experience, could easily manage. They purchased a modest space on 555 Opelika Road - a location still open today.
After renovating the space themselves, Kevin was let go from his software-sales job.
"He has no income, I have no income," Brown said. "We both have families to support. We were scared. We had put every penny of our savings into this chicken-salad restaurant."
They powered through concerns and opened on Jan. 7, 2008, christening the new place with friends and family. No customers showed up.
"And I was like, they were right, this is stupid," Brown said. "I cannot believe I put all my money into this. Then, the first customer came."
Since that first customer, Brown said business has been nonstop.
They prepared 40 pounds of chicken salad for the first day and sold out in two hours. The second day, they made 80 pounds and sold out, again in two hours.
In November 2008, Brown and Kevin took their partnership a step further, parted for a few days from Chicken Salad Chick and flew to Jamaica to get married.
Much has changed since that year, but Brown said making food and serving customers has always been her top priority.
"The only thing we take seriously is the chicken salad and our service," Brown said. "We understand that we are a chick-y place, and we understand that the names are silly, and we understand that it makes people feel silly to say the names. People will come in giggling and saying, "I want the Fancy Nancy because I'm fancy.'"
Brown cites the support of her staff, which is quickly growing, and her husband, as major components in running the rapidly expanding company.
"The reason, internally, we're able to keep going like this, is every person in here has an absolute passion for their position," Brown said. "The momentum and the atmosphere in here are unbelievable, because nobody is in a position that they don't love. It feels good to come to work because everybody is happy."
Ali Rauch, the business' director of marketing, began working in December 2012 and praised the positive atmosphere Brown creates for employees.
"It's so much fun," Rauch said. "I say fun a lot, but it is. She's a very fun-loving person, and I think she realizes how blessed and lucky she is to be where she is, because it didn't start like this. It's all taken on a life of its own, and she's just along for the ride. This is where her passion is, and she didn't even realize that until five years ago."
Jessica Claussen, who graduated from Auburn in May 2013 with a degree in psychology, has worked for Chicken Salad Chick since her sophomore year. When applying for graduate school, she asked Kevin if he would write her a letter of recommendation, but Kevin had another idea. Instead of going off to school, the Browns wanted to keep Claussen on staff to work as a corporate trainer. She accepted, and said the family-like atmosphere is one of the reasons she wanted to stay on.
"It's such a team effort," Claussen said. "I've worked for them for years, and they're two of the most hardworking and best people who deserve absolutely every bit of success that they're having."
As for working with her husband, Brown said their polar opposite personalities are what keep the business and family running. Brown said Kevin is efficient, organized and business-oriented, while she is focused on the creative side.
Brown said the two constantly talk about work at home, bringing their different viewpoints to one. She likens their owning a business together like having a child - an attachment so dear that it can't be understood until it actually happens to you.
"There's nobody else I could talk to about this that would understand it and have the same feelings about it that I have as Kevin. It's a great thing."
Ultimately, Brown said Chicken Salad Chick has come to be less about food service and more about serving others.
"In the beginning, we thought it was chicken salad, because in the beginning, I just had to pay the power bill," Brown said. "It was supposed to be a car magnet. That's all. I think because of that, how it's all happened, it helps Kevin and I keep it all in perspective. Because it was so clearly not our plan, we want to be good stewards of what the plan actually is. We are just very grateful for every day."
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