New Leadership
Pollo Campero, the Guatemalan-born quick-service chicken chain, has appointed Julio Sánchez as CEO of its U.S. business, effective immediately. The move puts a seasoned multi-brand operator in charge of a domestic portfolio that has grown past 150 restaurants and is pressing for broader national reach.
Sánchez arrives with more than 25 years of QSR leadership spanning operations, franchising, and new-market development across North America, Latin America, the Caribbean, and Europe. Most recently, he served as chief operating officer of CKE International, the international arm of the Carl's Jr. system. Prior to that, he held senior roles at Pizza Hut, Burger King, and Church's Chicken, accumulating a track record in same-store sales recovery and brand launches in underpenetrated markets.
Priorities and Context
Sánchez's mandate at Campero USA centers on four near-term pillars: operational excellence, same-store sales acceleration, brand awareness, and guest-experience elevation. The emphasis on same-store sales is telling — QSR chains in the chicken category have faced persistent traffic headwinds over the past two years as consumers manage discretionary spending, making unit-level productivity a more urgent lever than raw unit count.
Pollo Campero operates more than 400 restaurants globally across Guatemala, El Salvador, Mexico, Honduras, Ecuador, and the United States, with U.S. locations representing the brand's primary growth frontier. The chain competes in a heavily contested fried-chicken segment where Chick-fil-A, Raising Cane's, and Popeyes have driven category-wide investment in new units and digital channels. Campero's differentiated positioning — anchored in Central American culinary heritage and recipes passed through generations — gives it a distinct identity, but converting that into mainstream trial remains the commercial challenge Sánchez inherits.
The appointment follows the departure of Luis Javier Rodas, the outgoing chief operating officer who concluded nearly 26 years with parent company CMI on Oct. 16. CMI, formally Corporación Multi Inversiones, is a family-owned multilatina conglomerate with operations across 15 countries and more than 50,000 employees globally.
Executive View
José Gregorio Baquero, global CEO of CMI Foods, described Sánchez as combining "deep operational expertise with sound business judgment and a proven record of delivering results." Sánchez, for his part, cited the brand's heritage and hospitality culture as central to his decision to join, pledging to keep restaurant team members and guests central to execution.
For franchise-focused QSR operators watching leadership transitions, the hire signals that Campero's parent is willing to recruit externally from mainstream U.S. and international QSR systems rather than promote from within the CMI family — a shift that aligns the brand more directly with conventional domestic growth playbooks. With 150-plus U.S. units, Campero remains a mid-scale regional player, but the infrastructure and brand awareness investments Sánchez oversees in the next 12 to 18 months will determine how aggressively the chain can close the gap with larger chicken-category competitors.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
