When discussing the needs and best practices of demand planning, supply chain management, or S&OP, it’s useful to examine the successes (and failures) of other businesses. In the Food & Beverage space, we can learn from companies who have followed “the right way” of doing things, and also from those mavericks who broke all the rules and have ended up on top. Today we’re going to look at a plucky (see what we did there?) chicken-finger restaurant from Baton Rouge that’s one of the fastest-growing restaurant businesses in America.
If you haven’t yet heard of Raising Cane’s, you probably don’t eat much fast food… or at least many chicken fingers. Believe it or not, 53-year-old Todd Graves, the restaurant chain’s co-founder and CEO, is now America’s richest restaurateur, worth an almost unbelievable $22 billion. That puts this down-to-earth chicken-finger guy who named his restaurant after his dog in the same financial league as Rupert Murdoch, and makes him a few billion more valuable than Dallas Cowboys owner (and oil/gas magnate) Jerry Jones (at a paltry $19.5 billion).
Readers of a certain age might never even consider why anyone would patronize a restaurant that served nothing but chicken fingers, deeming it food for adolescents or those without discerning palates. Obviously the market disagrees, since Raising Cane’s per-location restaurant earnings are staggeringly high, at $6.6 million per year on average. According to Forbes, that’s more than double most fast-food chains’ performance, which are typically lucky to reach $2 million in sales annually. Total yearly sales including all 900-plus Raising Cane’s locations hit $5.1 billion in 2024, and the company is still aggressively expanding, adding 125 or more new locations per year. Newsweek reported that Graves plans to top 1,000 locations by the end of the year, on his way to his next goals of “$10 billion in sales, average unit volumes of $8 million, and 1,600 restaurants in all major cities and new international locations around the world. We’ll have 150,000 crew members including 16,000 internal promotes. And we’ll give back $100 million to communities.” The story also points out that Raising Cane’s recently surpassed KFC on the US’s list of top chicken restaurants, now trailing only Chick-Fil-A and Popeyes.
So, how could a fast-food restaurant that only serves one main menu item make it so big? When a 22-year-old Graves and Craig Silvey, his childhood/college buddy, wrote their initial business proposal about a chicken-finger-only restaurant for a class at LSU, they were told their overall business model was solid but the specific idea would never work successfully. Famously, their project received the lowest grade in the class. They were told by their professor (and many bank lenders over the next couple of years) that not having more diverse (and healthier) choices on the menu would eliminate most families and groups considering places to eat, since there’s inevitably one child or group member that doesn’t want a certain type of food, and they’ll just go to another restaurant with more options. But Graves was fanatical about keeping the restaurant items delicious, limited, and universally likable (he likes to use the word “craveable”). While many kids, teens, and college students today might consider chicken fingers one of their favorite meals, that wasn’t really the case 29 years ago when the pair started their first Cane’s restaurant. But Graves had the vision and had learned enough about the restaurant business working previous jobs to give him the confidence to press forward.
Graves told Mythical Kitchen, “I believe in one thing and doing it better than anybody else. Focus. That’s why Cane’s has that focused menu. A lot of people say it’s a simple menu. Actually what we put together is not simple. It’s the right chicken. It’s marinated… brined for 24 hours. Hand-battered and breaded, and then goes down that one fry line, and then goes out the door…. People love craveable food, and serving craveable food that you can execute on a great level every day, is always going to be a success.”
Another shocker is that Raising Cane’s isn’t even an original restaurant concept. Graves himself is transparent about essentially stealing his idea of a chicken-fingers-and-fries restaurant from his days working at Guthrie’s on the University of Georgia campus during his college days. Guthrie’s is still in business, and has grown to over 50 locations (mostly in Alabama and Georgia) and a total annual sales revenue of around $37 million. And during the early 1990s, beef was being overshadowed in popularity by “healthier” chicken options including boneless chicken strips at national restaurant chains like Applebee’s and TGI Friday’s. But Graves told Forbes he knew he could do it better, and worked with local food suppliers to essentially crib off of Guthrie’s menu but tweak it to his liking. (For example, he said that Guthrie’s slightly thicker crinkle fries had too much inner softness of the potato, and their slightly thinner Texas toast was not as dense as he’d prefer.)
After saving up seed money working oil rigs and Alaskan salmon fishing boats, Graves and his partner worked with local investors as well as securing an SBA loan, allowing them to renovate a run-down business location and open their first restaurant near the LSU campus’s north entrance. At the end of their first month, they were able to cover all their costs and earn a total profit of $30. That may not sound impressive, but those in the know realize that the vast majority of restaurants aren’t profitable at all during their first one to three years. Raising Cane’s popularity grew slowly but steadily at first, and just 18 months later, the partners were able to borrow enough to purchase a property and build their first ground-up location (including a drive-thru), which earned them a completely new category of customer. Graves bought Silvey (who was weary of their 100-hour work weeks) out for a six-figure sum, and has never looked back, still maintaining tight control of every aspect of his restaurants, from the service to the food to the decor to the marketing campaigns. He can’t imagine ever selling out or going public.
To be fair, Raising Cane’s does serve more food items than just chicken fingers: they serve a total of five. Not five main dishes… five food items total. The menu offers chicken fingers (no variations in spice level or crispiness offered), crinkle-cut fries, coleslaw, Texas toast, and Cane’s Sauce, a proprietary house-made dipping sauce comprising primarily ketchup and mayonnaise, with possibly some garlic salt, pepper, and Worcestershire sauce mixed in. That’s the extent of the menu. George likes his chicken spicy? Sorry. You want a grilled chicken salad? Forget it, pal. No dessert items, either. While other chicken places are offering shakes, ice cream, salads, wraps, and multiple variants of bone-in fried and grilled chicken, not to mention mashed potatoes, multiple vegetable side dishes, and even items like shrimp and pot roast at times, Raising Cane’s motto is “One Love,” and that love is and always has been hand-battered, fresh-fried chicken fingers.
Okay, okay… technically for the past couple of years there’s been a chicken sandwich (made up of three standard Cane’s chicken fingers on a toasted sesame-seed bun with a leaf of lettuce and the ubiquitous Cane’s Sauce, bringing the total food inventory items to seven for stores that offer the sandwich. And Honolulu Magazine revealed a couple “secret menu” items including a behind-the-counter-only honey mustard sauce. You can ask for your Texas toast “BOB” style, which means Butter On Both sides, for an extra-decadent, crispier carb bomb. But that’s really it.
As Forbes reported, “Friends, family, bankers and customers have often suggested Graves add more to the mix. He’s heard it a hundred thousand times, maybe more. ‘I’ll look into that,’ he politely tells them, but he knows he won’t. ‘We do one thing—chicken fingers—and we do it better than anybody else,’ he says, laying out his core philosophy: ‘If you try to be all things to all people, you won’t be special.’”
No other successful chain restaurant has kept its menu anywhere near this lean. Even the famously spartan menu of In-N-Out now has 15-plus items to choose from, including their multiple not-so-secret-menu offerings. Cane’s “One Love” philosophy keeps the supply chain simpler, speeds up the ordering and drive-thru process, and gets customers their food more quickly.
In fact, Graves has said in multiple interviews that choices at his restaurants’ menus are kept intentionally minimal to make sure the drive-thru and in-store lines move quickly and the food quality stays high. Data shows that Raising Cane’s typically gets a car through its drive-thru process in about 2.5 minutes, which is 40% faster than McDonald’s and three times quicker than KFC.
Customers can substitute among sides (toast, coleslaw, fries, or Cane’s Sauce) at will and without extra cost, but those customizations take no extra time for workers to prepare or assemble than an unmodified “standard” combo order. There are no heat lamps or holding cabinets. Every food item is prepared fresh throughout the day, in each restaurant location. Any food that has sat around for even a few minutes is tossed out.
Co-CEO AJ Kumaran told Restaurant Business that trimming down a restaurant’s menu offerings isn’t as easy as it might seem. “People underestimate the complexity of being simple,” he said. “Focus is hard. Customers are your biggest judges… They know exactly how much sauce you’re supposed to get. They know exactly how your chicken is supposed to taste. They know exactly how it’s supposed to look when it comes out of the fryer.” A fanatical commitment to keeping the few food items on the menu as good as they can be has obviously led to Raising Cane’s fanbase growing at a fantastic rate.
Contrast this with McDonald’s, often held up as the ultimate example of fast-food restaurant success, which currently has around 145 items on its US menu, and where the food prep and cooking process could generally be termed assembly. Heat lamps, warmers, microwaves, and partially pre-cooked items are everywhere, as are customers that are seemingly happy with a perpetually mediocre, if familiar dining experience.
From a supply chain perspective, a restaurant that exclusively features boneless chicken tenders is obviously at risk of any supply chain disruption that impacts chicken farmers, processors, and shippers. But Raising Cane’s has been able to maintain quality and adequate supply by utilizing fresh chicken vendors like Ben E. Keith (an award-winning downline food distributor) and OK Foods, a 70-year-old, vertically integrated supplier that controls all aspects of the process, from raising the premium chickens on family farms to processing the meat to delivering fresh, boneless tenderloins to each restaurant, where they are brined, battered, fried, and served daily. When you won’t compromise on quality or process, and your business is growing at the rate of Raising Cane’s, fluctuations in the available supply and price of chicken is obviously a primary concern.
In 2021, Covid-related labor and supply issues caused the company some trouble, to the point where Graves sent 250 corporate staff to temporarily help with front-line operations. In 2023, what was termed cyber-security issues or system outages led to shortages in some Texas locations. But so far the company has been able to avoid lengthy major issues. When chicken prices spiked due to shortages, Cane’s elected not to raise their prices to suit, but rather made adjustments elsewhere. This kept customers loyal and vocal in their support.
Labor-related supply-chain issues have since been mitigated by the company’s vocal and consistent commitment to treating “crew members” well, who have helped secure Raising Cane’s a spot among only three restaurants on Glassdoor.com’s list of best places to work in America (as of the time of the report).
Sometimes it pays off to follow your passion, even when everyone from family to friends to bank lenders are telling you that your idea will never work. Luckily for Graves, he used all the negativity as fuel for his passion and worked harder than ever. He even doubled down when expanding, leveraging the business debt to get additional funding for new locations. Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005 and put 21 of his 28 stores offline, which nearly cost him the business. After that, Graves vowed he’d never put his company in that position again. It could easily have all gone wrong.
Silvey, now a CFO at an IT services firm, remains philosophical about his decision to sell out to his fanatical friend and business partner. He told Forbes, “It’s easy to have hindsight. There was a level of risk that no matter how many times I replay it, I know I wouldn’t have done. It’s like you’re always putting it on black on the roulette table.”
Another way Graves has bucked the normal business trend is in his strategy for marketing. One of the reasons you may not have heard of Raising Cane’s is that not much of the company’s $250 million annual media and marketing budget goes to the typical national/regional TV ad campaigns. Instead, Forbes says, Graves “prefers to give to local charities ($165 million over the years), sponsor local sports teams and partner with a whole lot of A-listers. He had a breakthrough with Snoop Dogg in 2021, when Graves thought it would make a fun video if the Doggfather worked the drive-thru, handing out orders and his new album.” The video went absolutely viral, and Graves continues to work closely with celebrities, instagram influencers, rappers/musicians, and sports stars. “Now a procession of movie stars, rock stars and sports stars line up to work with Cane’s—more than 80 in all last year, from NFL great Travis Kelce to rapper Ice-T to the WNBA’s Angel Reese. When the musician Post Malone, a friend, asked Graves to open a Cane’s near his Utah home, Graves let him design his own bright-pink store, then split the restaurant’s profits with him.”
So, with everyone from Wingstop to McDonald’s to Taco Bell now offering chicken tenders, all hoping to cash in on the national chicken finger craze Graves helped create, you might wonder whether Raising Cane’s has any plans to change its menu or its business model. Nope. Graves has achieved 16 straight years of same-store sales growth, and has no plans on adjusting his core beliefs or actions relating to his business. “I’m going to keep doing the same thing,” he told Forbes. “And if you do exactly what we do, you better be damn good at it, because we’re relentless.”
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