First a food truck.

Then a brick-and-mortar restaurant.

Now, three and a half years after selling their first ear of fire-roasted street corn, Birmingham entrepreneurs Phillip and Avrie Powell are ready to start franchising their Aww Shucks Gourmet Fire Roasted Corn concept throughout Alabama and beyond.

“Once we realized, ‘Hey, this is bigger than Birmingham; it needs to be all over the world,’ franchising became an option,” Phillip Powell told AL.com.

Franchise opportunities are available for those who want to start their own Aww Shucks food truck or restaurant or both, Powell said, adding that he has already received several inquiries from potential franchisees.

The Powells hope to open the first franchise in the first quarter of 2024, he said, and they plan to travel to cities around the Southeast to market the concept.

More details about franchise opportunities are available on the Aww Shucks website.

The Powells — driven by a desire to offer a healthy dining option that fit in with their plant-based lifestyle — launched Aww Shucks on July 4, 2020, when they parked their recently purchased food trailer in Birmingham’s Five Points West area and sold a couple hundred ears of street corn their first day in business.

“Picture, if you will, two people inside of a 6-by-10 (foot) trailer with hot corn, 95 degrees in July, and a line out the wazoo of people begging for more corn,” Phillip Powell recalled in a 2021 AL.com feature story. “We sold out in an hour.”

By the end of that first summer, their corn had become so popular that the Powells had to rethink their business plan. They purchased a second, bigger food trailer and another, larger corn roaster, and they hired more employees.

Then, in December 2022, the Powells cut the ribbon on their first Aww Shucks brick-and-mortar restaurant at 4120 Messer Airport Highway in Birmingham.

Along the way, Aww Shucks also set a Guinness World Record for the most corn shucked in a minute when their team of four people shucked 38 ears in 60 seconds on Sept. 25, 2021.

Also, in 2022, AL.com included Aww Shucks’ street corn on its lists of “68 must-try Alabama dishes.”

The Aww Shucks menu features about a dozen flavors of fire-roasted corn, including garlic-herb parmesan, creamy lemon-pepper, Buffalo ranch and traditional Mexican street corn, as well as a skillet corn baked potato.

For more information about Aww Shuck Gourmet Fire Roasted Corn, go here.