The chicken finger chain that wants to be a Hollywood star

Good morning, it’s Friday, April 10th. You can expect a mild day tomorrow, a chance of rain on Saturday, and a bigger chance of rain on Sunday — the National Weather Service predicts half an inch to an inch and a half for the weekend.

In today’s newsletter, we have a look at the possibility of much more severe rain in the future, the trials of attempting to buy Olympic tickets, and some potential activities for your weekend. But first, the fried chicken restaurateur with big plans for Hollywood.

Yesterday — the morning after their NCAA championship victory celebration at UCLA and a few days before their likely selection at the top of the WNBA Draft — local basketball stars Lauren Betts and Kiki Rice took some time out of the best week of their lives to serve chicken fingers at a drive-thru in Hollywood.

Betts and Rice were there as celebrity endorsers of Raising Cane’s, a Louisiana-born, Texas-based corporation that last year passed KFC to become the third-biggest chicken chain in America by sales. They delivered a press conference in front of chicken fingers, cole slaw, fries, Texas toast, Cane’s Sauce, and fountain drinks — the entirety of Raising Cane’s offerings.

Evan Lovett, who shares his fascination with Los Angeles on the social media account and podcast LA in a Minute, was also in attendance — the brand has brought him in as an endorser as well. And there’s a case to be made that no major corporation is more fascinated with L.A. right now than Raising Cane’s.

After opening their first L.A. County location in Azusa in 2019, the restaurant now has more than 50 locations open or planned in the metro area, including ten new stores just this year.

“Los Angeles is absolutely a priority market for us,” James Kook, a Raising Cane’s Area Leader of Restaurants, told us in an email.

The new locations in the region seem to trace the path of a particularly high-energy tourist. A brightly-lit outpost on Universal Citywalk opened in December. New stores will be in Westwood Village, at SoFi Stadium, and on Santa Monica’s Third Street Promenade by the end of the summer.

Most perplexingly, the chain is spawning three new restaurants in Hollywood within a one-mile radius over the course of about nine months.

You can visit all three stations of the sauce on foot in about half an hour.

The decision to put so many chicken shops in one neighborhood “really comes down to demand and how people move through Los Angeles” said Kook, who employed a unique form of corporate capitalization in his email to L.A. Material. “Each of those Restaurants serves a slightly different trade area, whether it’s tourists on the Walk of Fame, locals, nightlife traffic or commuters.” 

But putting their logo all over in high-traffic tourist centers is also, of course, a global brand awareness play. “Locations like Hollywood & Highland, where tens of millions of people pass by annually, give us a unique opportunity to showcase the Brand on a global stage,” Kook said. “With major events coming to Los Angeles over the next several years, that visibility becomes even more meaningful.”

“L.A.’s food scene is in crisis,” said a Hollywood Reporter headline last year. “Fast food chains have been struggling,” a restaurant trade reporter told the L.A. Times in February. SoCal-based brands Fatburger, Jack in the Box, and Chipotle have all faced high-profile revenue turmoil. But Raising Cane’s management has either not read the headlines or chosen to ignore them.

The aggressive expansion in L.A. has not been without expensive hiccups: Cane’s bought the Googie-style Norms on La Cienega Blvd for $16 million in 2021 with plans to take over the space, but reversed course in 2024 after a public outcry. They now rent out the building with Norms as a tenant.

Unlike franchise-model chains like Subway and McDonald’s, where most of the stores are operated by entrepreneurs who lease the brand, all Raising Cane’s are corporate-owned. That means every location is almost entirely the property of Todd Graves, Raising Cane’s founder and co-CEO: Graves owns 90 percent of the business and, like his restaurant, is also upping his visibility in Hollywood.

Graves is from Baton Rouge, but not a stranger to this LA: The canonical history of his restaurant documents his time as a boilermaker at refineries in El Segundo and Torrance. Both cities have Raising Cane’s locations now (Torrance has two).

And Graves has recently become an L.A. resident once again — he paid $23 million last month for the Hollywood Hills mansion that most famously served as Vincent Chase’s home in Entourage. His neighbor, Leonardo DiCaprio, brought Graves as a guest to the Golden Globes last month, Page Six reported. They went to a Laker game together last year.

Graves’s near-full ownership of the chain has earned him the title of America’s richest restaurateur, knocking on the door of the Forbes list of the 100 richest people in the world. The list’s estimate of Graves’s net worth doubled between last year and this year.

How has the restaurant chain managed to grow so quickly? Taking on significant debt, including a $1.25 billion loan last year. Fitch gave the debt a BB+ rating, just below investment grade, with risks including a high cash burn rate from the chain’s quick expansion.

Is Todd Graves planning on becoming more of a presence in L.A., and maybe in the entertainment industry? “Todd has always had a genuine connection to Los Angeles,” Kook told us. “As we continue to grow in LA, it’s natural for him to spend more time here supporting the business, our Crew and the Communities we serve.”

“That said, his primary focus is building the Brand, supporting our Restaurants and staying connected to our Crews and Customers.”

Thank you for reading L.A. Material. We’re brand new, and reader-supported. If you like what we’re up to, pass this along to a friend and consider upgrading your subscription.

RINGSTOP: Tickets to the 2028 summer Olympics in Los Angeles went on sale this past week for some lucky locals chosen in a ticket lottery, and Angelenos responded with fervor — sales were strong — and with many, many complaints. Andie Pangan couldn’t find affordable tickets to tennis or climbing. Lori Rovner suffered tech difficulties and then was appalled by steep service fees. Tony Anthony found none of the $28 tickets for locals that had been promised. Over at Torched, Olympics tracker Alissa Walker shared her experience, and the tale of one Parisian who managed to get tickets to 24 events at the 2024 Games. LA28 opened ticket sales to global buyers on Thursday — and dropped a slightly defensive press release explaining that more $28 tickets will be forthcoming and that “only about 5% of tickets — prime seats to marquee events — cost more than $1,000.”

WAFFLE MOUSE: Disney is planning to lay off as many as 1,000 positions in the coming weeks, The Wall Street Journal reports. The news comes days after Sony Pictures Entertainment announced they were laying off hundreds of employees.

RAINING PAINS: The L.A. Times has a briefing on the increased likelihood of a “super El Niño” in the coming rain year, rivaling the strength of the 1997-98 El Niño, which brought 31 inches of rain to Downtown L.A. Will that happen again? Nobody knows yet: “The state’s rainfall at the end of the year will be determined by more factors, such as the frequency and strength of atmospheric rivers, than whether it’s technically an El Niño year.”

PUNKIN’ DONUTS: Since punk scene mainstays like Oki-Dog and Atomic Cafe are no longer around, L.A. Taco consulted some prominent local punk musicians for a guide to their favorite places to eat in town, including an endorsement of Skaf’s in Highland Park from artist Fat Tony: “Look, don’t walk by Skaf’s after you’ve had lunch. They got mind control devices.”

ALL OF GARDEN: The Theodore Payne Foundation’s annual Native Plant Garden Tour goes down both days this weekend. Five different gardens around L.A., including the foundation’s, will be on view.

STARTRUCKS: Tomorrow evening, SoFi Stadium welcomes Monster Jam, the touring monster truck extravaganza. Twelve trucks will race each other, do tricks, and jump over cars. Grave Digger, the world’s most famous monster truck, will be in attendance — as will last year’s Monster Jam Inglewood winner, Son-uva Digger, the “next generation of the Grave Digger family.”

CARBY’S: BagelFest West, the California debut of a popular New York festival, takes place this Sunday afternoon with 20+ providers of bagel and bagel accessories and a panel of expert judges that will declare a “Best Bagel.” (PopUp Bagels, now open in Brentwood, won in 2022). An all-access pass is $70, but if you start fasting now you can easily make that up in free samples.

BANDA EXPRESS: La Cita in DTLA is hosting Butchona, a queer Latina party, from 2pm to 9pm this Saturday, featuring a build your own Bloody Mary bar. Free entry for the first 50 arrivals.

For today’s peek inside our subscriber-only Discord server, our newsletter from yesterday reminds former L.A. city employee @Emma Taylor of a different, even more confusing Runyon Canyon statue in #movies-music-art.

AND FINALLY… A poem to pair with your morning coffee: “Your Catfish Friend" by  Richard Brautigan.

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