The relaunch and re-disappearance of Koo Koo Roo

Good morning. It’s Friday, May 29th. Expect nothing less than a gorgeous spring day in the low 70s.

Two years ago, Los Angeles celebrated a local comeback story: Koo Koo Roo, the skinless chicken chain that peppered the landscape in the 1990s before shuttering in 2014, was coming back.

But just as quickly as it reappeared, Koo Koo Roo vanished again. And the brand is now being flame-broiled on social media by impatient fans: “LA was fed a Koo Koo Roo lie,” reads the title of a recent thread on the Los Angeles Reddit. 

The Koo Koo Roo revival was announced in collaboration with ChainFEST, a festival honoring chain restaurants that was co-founded by, among others, actor/writer B.J. Novak and producer Nicholas Kraft. Participating brands set up tents at the event to serve gourmet takes on casual restaurant fare, and the festival increasingly serves as something of a local Comic-Con for fast-food outlets: a place to celebrate the titans of the industry and sometimes revive the intellectual property of the past.

Kraft told us he’d been working with the owners of the Koo Koo Roo brand on a relaunch for years. And when it came together at ChainFEST 2024, it was the most-covered participant in the festival. Among the Koo Koo Roo faithful in attendance: Kim and Khloe Kardashian, who grew up eating there. “B.J. and I walked them around and they kept talking about how excited they were for KKR,” Kraft told us via text. “We talked about the KKR mac and cheese with the little crispy bits on top.”

Koo Koo Roo’s tent at Chainfest actually served that mac and cheese, along with garlic mashed potatoes. No chicken was on offer, but the new ownership told multiple news outlets that they were in possession of the original recipe and preparing to serve it at an actual brick and mortar Koo Koo Roo location by “late 2025.” The comeback story was picked up by, among others, the L.A. Times, KCRW, Variety, Los Angeles Magazine, L.A. in a Minute, Los Angeles Business Journal, and multiple local news stations.

But since last fall — roughly when the chain had announced its first new location would be open — there have been no more updates on the relaunch. The brand has gone completely dark, and nobody associated with it responded to our requests for comment.

Dramatic turns are hardly new to the history of Koo Koo Roo. The chain was founded in 1988 by two brothers, Mike and Ray Badalian, but changed hands multiple times over the next decade, during which the company also bought the Hamburger Hamlet restaurant chain and the ceramics chain Color Me Mine in a bid to diversify. In 1998, legendary executive Lee Iacocca was brought in as acting chairman to oversee a turnaround — but between that year and 2010, the company went from 40 locations to three. The chain was acquired by the San Antonio-based Luby’s Restaurant Corporation in 2010 and shuttered by 2014.

In 2021, the Koo Koo Roo brand was bought by Daniel Farasat, a real estate developer who grew up in the city. At the time, Farasat was looking for opportunities to take his money out of L.A — in an interview with the podcast “CEOs You Should Know” last year, Farasat said he was looking for investments in Texas when he discovered that Luby’s was liquidating its assets, including Koo Koo Roo.

 Farasat said he acquired the brand as a fan first — he grew up loving the chicken sandwich, and wants to do right by the chain’s memory. “As much as I’ve had pretty good success with the real estate… this is definitely the most exciting thing I’ve been involved with,” he said on the podcast.

That April 2025 interview was the last record we could find of Farasat discussing the Koo Koo Roo relaunch. Calls and emails to Daniel Farasat and companies affiliated with the relaunch were not returned.

Because of his association with the relaunch announcement, Kraft now estimates he gets “three or four texts a month” asking about its status. But while he said he’s been in touch with Farasat in recent months, he hasn’t gotten an exact timeline either.

“As far as I know they are progressing, though maybe a little slower than everyone would like,” he said.

As the announced opening deadline came and went, many devotees of the chain have flipped from hopeful to spiteful. “I feel gaslit😫 what happened? All this hype and now just crickets.😢,” commented @chriswonzer on the Koo Koo Roo Instagram last month. “Begging for an update here I’m starving,” wrote @stephsmeyer on November 1st, 2025.

That last comment got a reply the same day: “working on it!” The account has not posted since.

The story of this year’s Council District 9 election is also a story of demographic and representational change: The district has been represented by a Black council member since 1963, when Gilbert W. Lindsay made history as L.A.’s first Black elected official. But after more than a half-century of Black representation, all six of the candidates on the ballot vying to succeed Councilmember Curren Price in South Los Angeles are Latino.

The race is in some ways a microcosm of the city’s broader political moment, in that each of the prominent candidates represent different, albeit overlapping, camps of Democrat power in Los Angeles. In a new L.A. Material report, I look at the transformation of the district, and the state of the race.

-Julia Wick

GARLIC PO-POTATOES: The L.A. Times has a deep dive on the cozy relationship between the LAPD and police booster nonprofits that give donations to the department in exchange for perks — including, before the fundraiser was cancelled, an opportunity to cruise around in a Porsche motorcade with senior officers.

GOAL SLAW: Ahead of the influx of World Cup tourism, Japan Today has a story on what makes LAX an especially nightmarish experience for international travelers. "There's no signs really saying where I gotta go," says an Australian mining industry employee. "I did my research, and I'm still struggling."

BRT-ERNUT SQUASH: Metro broke ground on Wednesday on the long-delayed North Hollywood to Pasadena Bus Rapid Transit line, but as Streetsblog lays out, the project still has some obstacles ahead of it — the city of Burbank, for example, has refused to issue construction permits for the line, leading to a lawsuit from Metro. 

CHICKEN NOODLE SUIT: As the threat from the overheated Garden Grove chemical tank cools off, residents living nearby are figuring out their next steps — including multiple class-action lawsuits and a call from activists to shut the entire facility down.

ICU-CUMBER SALAD: Hospital of Emotions, the immersive art show in a historic hospital that we wrote about in a newsletter last month, opens this weekend showcasing the work of 70 artists in 80 rooms that used to see actual patients. 

SMACKARONI AND CHEESE: Lucha Va Voom, L.A.’s decades-old luchador/burlesque promotion, is throwing a belated Drinko de Mayo smackdown this Saturday night from its new home at the Fox Theater in Pomona (they moved after The Mayan in DTLA, where Lucha Va Voom had performed for 22 years, closed down last year).

HAUSE SALAD: Hauser + Wirth, the Swiss-originating art gallery/bookstore, is celebrating ten years in its Arts District location on Saturday with talks, workshops, screenings, performances, and free ice cream.

SOME LIKE IT POT (PIE): The Academy Museum’s Marilyn Monroe: Hollywood Icon exhibit opens on Sunday, with “hundreds of original objects” and “rarely seen personal materials” from the actress’s life and career. At 6:30 p.m., the museum will also be screening Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, from which a pink dress will be on view in the exhibit.

More than three decades ago, the novelist Carolyn See sat in her Topanga Canyon home and made a prediction to the writer David Ulin about the literary landscape of Los Angeles: In the year 2020, she said, or at least “in that decade, Los Angeles will be to the world what Paris was in the 1920s.”

Maybe? We do have great croissants here. And our river, like the Seine, is not as clean as we would like, but it’s getting better. And, of course, we are a city of readers and writers. L.A. Material’s Jessica Garrison has a round-up of spring books you should know about.

AND FINALLY… A poem to pair with your morning coffee: “Earl” by Louis Jenkins.

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