The CEO Who Joined the Night Shift

In 2015, Cheryl Bachelder stepped down as CEO of Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen after transforming the struggling chain into a billion-dollar brand. But what most people never heard about happened two years earlier. During a particularly brutal stretch of store closures and franchisee frustration, Bachelder spent a week working the drive-through window and mopping grease traps at a location in Baton Rouge. No camera crew. No press release. She just showed up in a polo shirt and a name tag that read "Cheryl."

The franchise owner didn't recognize her at first. When he did, he was speechless. Here was the woman who could fire him with a phone call, elbow-deep in fryer oil, asking what the night crew needed to do their jobs better.

Bachelder later wrote in Dare to Serve that real leadership means descending into the work others consider beneath them — not as a stunt, but as a conviction.

Paul tells us that Christ Jesus, who existed in the very form of God — equal with the Almighty in glory and power — did not cling to that status. He emptied Himself. He took on the nature of a servant. He descended not just to a drive-through window but to a Roman cross, the lowest point human cruelty could devise. And because He went all the way down, the Most High lifted Him to the highest name in all creation. The path to exaltation always runs through the willingness to kneel.