Billy Jacob: Louisiana native heats up Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits with a return to Cajun roots

Nation's Restaurant News, Jan 27, 2003 by Jack Hayes

In the middle of the Great Depression in Lafayette, La., Billy Jacob's mother, Olite, founded the Four Corners Cafe, a little operation that grew under his parent's stewardship into the 400-seat Jacob's Restaurant--an establishment with five dining rooms.

It was partly because of Olite Jacob's good cooking that the executive chef of 1,690-unit Popeyes Chicken & Biscuits got to go to college.

"I was 18 and in my first year in college when Popeyes opened [in 1972] in New Orleans," Jacob recalls. "A good friend of mine was attending Tulane University there, and when he came home for Christmas break, he couldn't stop talking about that Popeyes chicken. I thought he'd been drinking too much. 'You've got to try it!' he kept saying. He was that nuts about it. And, as I found out, he was right."

Since joining Popeyes in 1993 after the chain was taken out of bankruptcy along with sister brand Church's Chicken by Atlanta-based AEC Enterprises, the 48-year-old Jacob has overseen development of key Popeyes seafood items, such as its popular Firecracker Shrimp. He also has been instrumental in the debut of the "Cajun Craver" single-item impulse carryout line.

"Billy can take a broad concept and create wonderful food from it," boasts Jacob's boss, Joe Scafido, the chief marketing and menu officer at Popeyes, who has worked with Jacob during the past 10 years. "That's one of the critical connections between us--that I can say, 'I was thinking about such and so,' and give Billy the range we want to be in and the plate presentation. Three hours later he'll call me down to the kitchen, and he'll have it. My experience with chefs in general is that this kind of thing doesn't happen that often."

Billy and his brother Glenn were being groomed to take over the family cafe in Lafayette. However, the demise of the Louisiana oil economy coupled with a road widening that cut away part of its parking lot and dining area left the family no choice but to close the 50-year-old operation in 1985.

"I took restaurant-management courses for a year at the University of Southwestern Louisiana, back in my hometown, but eventually I made it to The Culinary Institute of America, from which I graduated in 1974," Jacob recalls.

Within a year, despite a lifelong passion for aviation that he'd always believed would lead him into piloting or a career in the aircraft industry, Jacob launched his own restaurant, a breakfast-and-lunch establishment called Billy Jacob's, in Lafayette.

Through his partners in that venture, Jacob entered the world of food manufacturing, where, at that time, the key players were scientists--and hardly anyone had yet imagined a role for a young executive chef.

"I had a couple of business associates, and we wanted to create a line of famous Cajun pies," Jacob recalls. "The idea was a turnover pastry filled with either crabmeat, shrimp or combination seafood."

During the process of hunting venture capital, seeking brokers and looking for a plant, they found in Kansas City, Kan., a manufacturer who tested some of their product and showed them how it could be made. Unfortunately, they never turned a profit, Jacob says.

"But I got very interested in the manufacturing side," he concedes. "You could take what you developed in the kitchen and put it into production. Needless to say, you could produce more than one meal at a time--you could make product for millions of people."

Thus, Jacob made it to Popeyes by way of Omaha, Neb.-based food giant ConAgra, where he had worked in the frozen-foods division and also had taken an assignment to develop a fish stick and fillet line for the Healthy Choice seafood group.

"I made a lean catfish dinner for the president of the division who had just joined the company," Jacob recalls. "Next thing I knew I was put on a $40 million pilot project, trying to figure out how to get fish sticks and fillets into a box."

It was through ConAgra that Jacob, who then also was involved in seafood sales, found out about the company that had taken Popeyes out of bankruptcy and was looking for shrimp. Jacob saw it as an opportunity to sell some shrimp gumbo or shrimp etouffee, but he wound up landing a job.

"We were working on a peel-and-eat shrimp that actually got into test," Jacob recalls. "Popeyes had an honest, sincere and strong interest in developing its shrimp business. It had a lot of chicken people, but I was the first seafood person they brought in, so shrimp transitioned popcorn shrimp from a back-of-the-house-prepared product to a prebreaded product to get consistency and ease of operation. "That was one of the first things I did," Jacob remembers.

And, searching his Cajun seafood roots, Jacob also developed the brand's top-selling Firecracker Shrimp, arguably the hottest item yet to come out of Popeyes Atlanta test kitchen.

"Fried shrimp and seafood, stuffed shrimp and crab stew were my favorite foods growing up," Jacob reminisces. "If we boiled two hampers of crab, my mother could sit there for hours pulling out crab meat. And my brother and I would absolutely die for it -- hot French bread and hot crab stew over rice. Sundays were reserved for Mom's cooking."