Big Chicken, the fast-casual chicken concept backed by Craveworthy Brands, has opened its fourth college campus location at Jackson State University in Mississippi — the first historically Black college or university (HBCU) to host the brand. The unit operates inside the Legacy Food Court at 1400 John R. Lynch St. through a managed-dining partnership with SodexoMAGIC, the Minority Business Enterprise joint venture between Sodexo and Magic Johnson Enterprises.
Kitchen & Menu Scope
The campus kitchen is built to run from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Monday through Friday, covering a full daypart spread that demands versatile cooking and holding equipment. The lineup includes a BIG Breakfast program — Chicken and Biscuit, Sausage/Egg/Cheese Biscuit and Bacon/Egg/Cheese Biscuit with hash browns — alongside signature chicken sandwiches (The Original, Uncle Jerome's Nashville Hot, The Pit Boss, The Ultimate and Shaq Attack), crispy tenders, tender plates, and Shaq Snacks such as The Smokehouse and The Hot Shot. Bold sides — crinkle-cut fries, onion rings, cheese curds, mac and cheese and coleslaw — round out the menu, with hand-spun shakes in four flavors completing the build. That breadth of hot and cold output in a food-court footprint points to a dense equipment package: fryers, biscuit ovens or combi units for breakfast, shake blending stations, and sufficient hot-holding capacity to sustain peak dining-hall rushes across a 6,000-student population.
Nontraditional Venue Expansion
The Jackson State opening is the latest step in Craveworthy's deliberate push into nontraditional venues — a channel that puts increasing pressure on foodservice equipment specifiers and contract dining operators to design kitchens capable of handling celebrity-brand menus within the footprint and utility constraints of existing campus food courts. Earlier in September 2026, Big Chicken opened at Georgia Institute of Technology inside Crave Kitchen Georgia Tech, which houses six additional Craveworthy concepts within the John Lewis Student Center — a multi-brand ghost-kitchen-style buildout that maximizes back-of-house efficiency across shared infrastructure.
Creaveworthy CEO Gregg Majewski highlighted the brand's campus ambitions: "Jackson State has the kind of energy and school pride that Big Chicken was made for. We're bringing great food and a ton of personality to a campus that has plenty of its own." SodexoMAGIC Regional Vice President Murat Bora noted the partnership reflects the operator's commitment to "bringing innovative dining options to our students" through nationally recognized concepts.
With more than 40 locations now open and dozens in development across traditional restaurants, college campuses, arenas, airports and cruise ships, Big Chicken's rollout illustrates the broader trend of branded fast-casual concepts penetrating every nontraditional daypart channel. For equipment dealers and consultants working in the managed-dining and campus dining segment, that means more retrofit installs and shared-infrastructure kitchen designs — not greenfield builds — where equipment selection must balance menu complexity with constrained utility access and limited floor space.
The HBCU angle also carries significance for foodservice operators watching diversity-focused institutional partnerships: Jackson State President Denise Jones Gregory, Ph.D., called the opening part of the university's vision to provide "a more diverse, modern and engaging dining experience," framing branded concept dining as a student-recruitment and retention tool that is now driving capital investment decisions at institutions across the country. For those tracking campus foodservice buildouts and equipment procurement, the Craveworthy multi-concept model — concentrating several brands in one shared kitchen — represents a growing specification pattern worth monitoring.
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.
