Brown’s Chicken was founded in 1964 and called Brown and Portillo Inc.  John Brown and Frank Portillo started the company in Chicago and they expanded the company to many different locations across the United States in the 1970s.  They also made the change to the name Brown’s Chicken and in the 1980s they added pasta to the menu.  In the 1990s they added the name The Chicago Way and this allowed them to serve Vienna Beef hot dogs, hamburgers, and Italian beef sandwiches as well.  They filed for bankruptcy in 2009 and currently Toni Portillo, Frank’s daughter is the president of the company and Dick Portillo owns the chain.  He is Frank’s younger brother.

Obviously with a name like Brown’s Chicken the specialty is chicken.  They use only the best Grade A chicken and cut it into eight peaty pieces.  They hand-bread the chicken with their own batter that contains no heavy spices or herbs.  They use neutral-tasting cottonseed oil to fry the chicken until it is golden brown and this gives them a very unique flavor and appearance of their chicken.  They also offered batter-dipped mushrooms, corn fritters, pastas, homemade biscuits, and specialty sides as well.  The last thing that they added to the menu was award-winning Italian beef and sausage giving them a full menu of items that can please a large number of individuals.

Brown’s Chicken offers a restaurant franchise opportunity for those that possess the right qualities.  They are looking for hands-on type of individuals to undertake an intense eight week training program that will help the owner and the chosen manager to run the restaurant properly.  The individual that will fit best for the Brown’s Chicken franchise will be a self-starter with a necessity for quality, service, attitude, and cleanliness.  There will be fees and financial requirements that will have to be met before you can open a franchise and you will have to commit a decent investment to the franchise to get it up and running.