Auburn Engineering alumni, twin brothers take on roles at Chick-fil-A

There are three things that run in the Powell family: Auburn Engineering, twins, Chick-fil-A.

In some ways, Brandon and Justin Powell have a familiar story to many Auburn University graduates: To help pay their way through school, they picked up part-time jobs as students. The brothers started out in landscaping before the growing demands of their education meant they needed to find jobs they could do in the evenings.

So they picked up jobs at Chick-fil-A, and that’s probably where their story leaves the familiar behind.

Brandon, ’17 chemical engineering, and Justin, ’17 mechanical engineering, are identical twins from Smiths Station who, after earning their degrees, decided to pursue careers with Chick-fil-A, though they took different paths to get there.

Today, both of those brothers run Chick-fil-A locations. Justin in Byram, Mississippi, and Brandon the location in the Auburn Mall — the same franchise location where he and his brother worked in college.

The twins say their engineering education prepared them for the fast-paced problem solving required by running a high-demand business.

“Engineering school teaches you how to think, you know?” said Brandon, sitting at a table in front of his Chick-fil-A location. “How to think analytically — how to solve problems. And there are problems that arise every single day.”

The chemical engineering major worked in the pulp and paper industry after graduation before he felt called back to work for Chick-fil-A.

His work and college experience would continue to pay dividends, from learning Lean and Six Sigma from his time in pulp and paper to putting in the long hours studying for his separations class. The work ethic he developed in chemical engineering would help carry him through the years ahead.

Justin knew that he found his calling while learning the business in college.

“I quickly fell in love with the culture. I Iove the restaurant business — being on my feet, working with my hands, seeing the satisfaction from guests as you get to interact and engage with them,” Justin said on a call from Mississippi. “It was really, really cool.”

Chick-fil-A is famously selective when choosing “operators” of its locations — the company term for the franchisees who run its restaurants.

And for good reason. The corporation owns the building and the brand, and the operators are responsible for everything else, from payroll to product to local marketing.

“Every location is operated as a small business,” Brandon said. “My staff, I pay for their benefits, salary, everything. None of that comes from corporate — even if I wanted to do retirement or a gym membership, that’s on me.”

While more than 100,000 people apply to be an operator each year, the company selects only about 100 each year — a tenth of a percent.

Prior to becoming operators, both Brandon and Justin went through the company’s corporate Leadership Development Program helping to train new staff ahead of the company opening a new location. The positions meant moving with their families across the country hopping from hotel to hotel.

It was a great way to see the company culture — and the United States.

“We lived in 20 different cities over four years,” Brandon said.

But getting his foot in the door of the company he cared so much about wasn’t without sacrifice. After wrestling with the question, he and his wife, Katie, decided it was worth giving up a high-paying position in the paper industry to pursue the opportunity.

And while Brandon was in the corporate training program, Katie gave birth to their first child, a daughter, while they were living out of a hotel room.

“It makes me laugh thinking about how she was like, ‘Are you kidding me? You’re going to work for a fast-food company with an engineering degree?’” Brandon said, recounting his conversation about the career switch with Katie. “In hindsight, it paid off, but we didn’t know at the time that it would turn into becoming an operator.”

Every business owner knows the role comes with risks. In Brandon’s case, the company laid it out for him: He was going to become the operator of his old location in the Auburn Mall just as a new drive-thru location was opening in the parking lot next to East University Drive.

While the Auburn Mall location had done booming drive-thru business, it was about to take a huge hit from the new location that would be run by the area’s other Chick-fil-A operator.

Would they be able to handle taking over their own business as young parents under those circumstances?

Together, they leaned on their faith and decided it was worth the risk.

“There were still seasons and times when we questioned it — when we felt like we were kind of wandering through the desert,” Brandon said.

But they’ve made it out of the desert. The restaurant’s customer satisfaction scores are the highest in the area, sales are moving back up and Brandon said they’re currently working through the busiest season of the year.

And looking back, it was worth to get started building their own location, and to get back to the Plains.

“We knew where we wanted to be,” he said.