- Quick meals hen chain Elevating Cane’s plans to open 100 extra places this 12 months. This follows the opening of 118 places final 12 months. Hen-focused eating places have seen gross sales explode in recent times, with some manufacturers being bought for $1 billion.
The hen wars are escalating.
Elevating Cane’s, a fast-food restaurant that makes a speciality of hen fingers, has opened three new eating places this week and Fox Enterprise studies the corporate plans to open practically 100 extra earlier than the top of the 12 months.
That follows 2024’s record-breaking 12 months of development for the corporate, which noticed one other 118 places open up.
Ontario, Ohio; Wichita, Kansas; and Wethersfield, Conn. are the newest cities to get Elevating Cane’s. Up subsequent is Visalia, Calif., considered one of 5 deliberate openings in July. (Las Vegas may even get a location that month.)
The corporate, based in 1996 in Baton Rouge, La., at the moment has over 800 places unfold throughout the nation.
Hen-focused eating places are on a long-standing tear. The hen class noticed gross sales enhance 9% final 12 months, based on Technomic. Burgers had been up simply 1%. In latest months, McDonald’s has added hen strips to its menu and Taco Bell just lately started serving Crispy Hen Tacos and Burritos.
Chick Fil A remains to be the chief within the class, however the class actually started to take off in 2019, when Popeye’s launched its personal hen sandwich for the primary time in its then-50-year historical past. The chain had what it thought was a two-month provide of hen sandwich supplies readily available when it launched the product. As social media chatter exploded, it exhausted these in simply two weeks.
That’s elevating the curiosity of traders. Dave’s Sizzling Hen just lately bought for $1 billion—and Bojangles has reportedly reached out to funding bankers to probably promote itself at a possible price ticket of $1.5 billion.
