Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers

Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers started with a business plan that got a failing grade. Todd Graves wrote it for an economics class at Louisiana State University, and his professor told him the concept of a restaurant selling only chicken fingers would never work. Investors agreed, turning him down flat. So Graves spent two years working grueling jobs, including a stint as a commercial fisherman in Alaska, to scrape together the capital to open his first location near the LSU campus in Baton Rouge. That first restaurant, which the company now calls The Mothership, opened its doors on August 28, 1996. Graves named the place after his yellow Labrador retriever, Cane. Every company mascot since has been a yellow Lab, too.

From the start, the menu was radically simple: chicken fingers, crinkle-cut fries, Texas toast, coleslaw, and the signature Cane's Sauce. That sauce, a tangy, peppery blend that the company keeps under tight secrecy, has become the stuff of fast-food legend. The chain has never added a permanent new entree to the core lineup. Even the chicken sandwich, introduced in 2020, is just three chicken fingers on a bun with lettuce and sauce. This laser focus is the whole point. Graves's philosophy, which he calls One Love, holds that doing one thing really well beats doing a dozen things okay. The company marinates fresh, never frozen chicken tenderloins, hand-batters them to order, and cooks them in small batches. That consistency, location after location, has built a fiercely loyal customer base.

As of 2025, Raising Cane's operates more than 900 restaurants across the United States and in Canada, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. The chain's system sales hit $5.1 billion in 2024, more than double what they were in 2021. Average revenue per location runs about $6.6 million a year, over three times the typical fast-food average. That performance pushed Cane's past KFC to become the third-largest chicken chain in America by sales, behind only Chick-fil-A and Popeyes. Forbes now estimates Graves's net worth at $22 billion, making him the richest restaurateur in the country. The company has no plans to sell or go public. Instead, it's opening around 125 new restaurants a year, with a goal of topping $10 billion in annual sales and cracking the top 10 of all U.S. restaurant chains. [edit]