Founder Seth Champion is photographed at the new Lee Highway location of Champy’s Fried Chicken which is under construction Tuesday, June 28, 2016, in Chattanooga, Tenn.Champy’s locations
* Alabaster, Alabama* Athens, Georgia* Daphne, Alabama* Lee Highway, Chattanooga* M.L. King Boulevard, Chattanooga* Murfreesboro, Tennessee (new)* Muscle Shoals, Alabama
Champy’s server Mandy Veasey takes the order of Nashville residents Kendall Daniel, left, and Jeremy Quarles as they visit the MLKing Boulevard restaurant on June 8, 2015.A decade after taking a job as a server at Champy’s in Chattanooga, Samantha Goonon has risen through the ranks and saved enough money to build her own licensed Champy’s restaurant.
The new restaurant, located off of Northwest Broad Street in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, will be the seventh for the growing franchise, which was founded by Seth Champion in Chattanooga with about $7,000 in cash and a loan from his father-in-law.
Today, the chain of restaurants has six stores and will grow to 250 employees once the 6,900-square-foot Murfreesboro location opens by the end of summer.
Goonon began working for Champy’s – her first and only restaurant employer – as a 22-year-old server while she was pursuing an elementary education degree at UTC, then she was promoted to general manager and then district manager over the following years, eventually managing both the chain’s Lee Highway and M.L. King Boulevard locations at once.