2018 Interns to Work Directly with Field Teams and Operational Tasks
Today is the second week of work for the summer interns with Church’s Chicken, but don’t count on them running for coffee or filing old paperwork. Now in its fourth year, The Church’s College Internship program is doubling down on its commitment to provide high-level, real-world corporate experience to promising young students ready to take on actual responsibilities. This 2018 class of four interns have been interacting with legal, marketing, and field operations departments within Church’s headquarters in Atlanta, GA.
“Providing true opportunities for career advancement is very important to us at Church’s,” said Felicia White, Senior Director of Training & Development. “Our goal with our internship program is to give students the same experience we give all other trainees and recruits. Learning by doing is an empowering step forward for ambitious professionals of any age.”
The Church’s organization is also eager to learn from its interns. For example, Natalie Litton, a rising senior at the University of Georgia, will be traveling to restaurants across the country and connecting with restaurant managers and teams between now and August. Litton will be tasked with making observations and curating content with her own unique perspective on engagement and teambuilding. She will also work side by side with White and other national field trainers to explore how corporate messaging works its way throughout a global network, particularly across franchisees and in multiple geographic markets. Social media as a training and communications tool will also be a focus. Her work will culminate in the cooperative creation of a new training and culture video which will debut at the brand’s Excellence in Leadership Conference (ELC) in early Fall.
“We are looking forward to incorporating Miss Litton’s and our other interns’ creativity and youthful energy into our thinking about how to engage employees on a cross-generational level,” continued White. “It isn’t the typical internship experience, and that’s by design. We want our interns to get a real sense of the restaurant industry by being an active part of it, not observing from a computer screen in an office.”
A Kennesaw State University student, April Wright, will be completing her internship in HR Communications, supporting global communications initiatives, managing the distribution of digital and print communications, and drafting and distributing internal messaging for philanthropic activities, leadership, employee engagement, and more. She will also provide editorial and presentation support and participate in the brainstorming and production of creative communication concepts.
Another intern, Jade Long, will be working in Church’s R&D/Quality Assurance (QA) department. Long’s internship will be a hands-on interaction with the QA team to identify deficiencies in the supply chain, follow up with suppliers, and document results. She will also have the unique opportunity to participate in the development of a new global menu item from idea phase to commercialization. Additional areas of focus will include continuous quality improvement for permanent and Limited Time Only (LTO) offers, new equipment development and testing, food and labor cost streamlining, and domestic and international operations systems improvements.
“We wanted an intern who was interested in learning the process of how we approve our chicken and how we develop new products,” offered Jennifer Scott-Ward, Senior Manager of Quality Assurance for Church’s Chicken and Miss Long’s internship supervisor. “We hope to give her a comprehensive understanding of the full R&D process and the stakeholders involved in delivering a consistent guest experience.”
Church’s legal department will also be hosting an intern this summer – Seal Ortega. Ortega, a rising 2L student at Emory School of Law in Atlanta stands to gain real-world exposure to the corporate legal world. In his undergraduate years, he attended New Mexico State University and interned for three years with the University of Georgia’s epigenetics and evolutionary biology teams. At Church’s, Ortega will support the legal team by conducting legal and statutory research, drafting memoranda of law, reviewing and drafting contracts, and participating in various legal projects that arise during the summer. He will also assist with document/data management, analyzing legal issues, and conducting legislative research as needed. The internship will give Ortega exposure to franchise law, litigation, supply and distribution, intellectual property, and real estate law.
“Our ideal intern was someone who had completed at least one year of law school and had an interest to one day becoming an in-house lawyer. Mr. Ortega will be of great value to the legal department by contributing on a number of projects in various legal disciplines,” said Craig Prusher, Executive Vice President and Chief Legal Officer for the brand.
“Summer internships are valuable learning opportunities for students, but also for our own teams,” added White. “Understanding what the next generation of leaders is learning in school, and how we can bridge that knowledge with real-world experience is one of the best ways to cultivate talent for the future.”
Founded in San Antonio, TX in 1952 by George W. Church, Church’s Chicken is one of the largest quick service restaurant chicken chains in the world. Church’s specializes in Original and Spicy Chicken freshly prepared throughout the day in small batches that are hand-battered and double-breaded, Tender Strips, sandwiches, honey-butter biscuits made from scratch and freshly baked, and classic, home-style sides all for a great value. Church’s (along with its sister brand Texas Chicken outside the Americas) has more than 1,650 locations in 27 countries and international territories and system-wide sales of more than $1 billion. For more information, visit www.churchs.com. Follow Church’s on Facebook at www.facebook.com/churchschicken and Twitter at www.twitter.com/churchschicken.
