Willie's Corporate Office Articles â Things To Know Before You Go. Mexican food in America is usually synonymous with hard shell tacos and queso dip. But beyond the ever-popular Tex-Mex favorites and San Francisco-style burritos that are actually a modern product ... read more.
Then, in March 2008, Popeyes founder Al Copeland, who had built the fried chickenâpeddling chain from a single unit into a global enterprise of some 800 units, died at the age of 64.
Al Copeland, the scrappy New Orleans kid who'd opened Popeyes Mighty Good Fried Chicken in 1972 and built it into the nation's third largest chicken chain, had borrowed heavily to buy the second largest, Church's Chicken. By 1992, he was $400 million in debt, went bankrupt and lost almost all of his locations.