At this year’s Kingdom of Callaway Supper on Tuesday, Shawn Burcham will be receiving the Settler’s Award.
“I know this organization has been around like 116 years so it’s an honor to be accepting the award and just to be nominated in general,” Burcham said. “You go through entrepreneurship, and you don’t really do this stuff for the awards and the recognition, but when they do come it’s an honor and from a long standing organization, it’s great.”
Burcham was born in 1970 at Boone Hospital in Columbia. He spent the first six months of his life living in Fulton before his family moved to Farmington. He attended Missouri State University in Springfield where he graduated with a degree in Business Management.
At Missouri State, he met his wife, Julie. They decided to move to southern Missouri where they started PFSbrands out of their garage in 1998.
Before starting his own company, Burcham spent five years with a Fortune 100 company, Mid-America Dairymen, now known as Dairy Farmers of America. Just out of college, he had a 14-state regional sales manager position for the Packaged & Processed Cheese Division. Then, he spent three years as a regional sales manager for a Midwest Chester’s fried chicken distributor.
In November 1999, Burcham and his wife moved to Holts Summit, where they have lived for the past 22 years.
They sold 100 percent of their company to their employees by creating an employee stock ownership plan in January 2017. Burcham still serves as CEO of the company and he is excited to see all of his fellow employee owners continue to grow the company.
PFSbrands has over 1,300 branded food service locations across 39 states. They are best known for their Champs Chicken franchise brand which was started in 1999. The company was recognized on the INC 5000 list for nine years in a row as one of the fastest growing privately held companies in America and has been consistently recognized nationally as a Great Place To Work.
Burcham has also started and founded PFS Blends, PFS Freight, Champs Chicken Franchising, BluTaco Franchising, Hangar 54 Pizza Franchising, and GRITT Business Coaching. He owns numerous other private businesses, and he is a partner in All-n-One Outdoor Solutions based out of Jefferson City.
His recently published book, Keeping Score with GRITT: Straight-Talk Strategies for Success is an Amazon #1 best seller. He has a passion for business, creating opportunities and coaching others to be more successful.
Burcham is also an instrument rated pilot, and when he’s not working he enjoys traveling across the country. Most importantly, he is proud to be a husband and the father of three beautiful daughters: Claudia, Payton and Ali.
“Thanks to my family for putting up lack of time sometimes and the challenges that come with having an entrepreneur in the family,” Burcham said. “Sometimes it looks really glamorous from the outside, but people don’t recognize all the different sacrifices the family has to make when someone like me is out here working all the time. I don’t look at it as work, because I truly enjoy what I do. But it’s tough for entrepreneurs, because we don’t think of it as work and we do like it and that drives us to be away from family a lot of times. So I really just appreciate them supporting all that.”
For more information about him or any of his businesses, visit www.shawnburcham.com.