This Fried Chicken Chain Just Got Purchased By Subway's Parent Company

Yet another fast casual chain has been purchased by a private equity company. This one's known for its Nashville hot chicken tenders, which you can get in varying degrees of spice levels — from no spice at all, to Reaper (for which you must accept a legal waiver due to its heat levels). If you guessed that it's Dave's Hot Chicken, which has been expanding rapidly over the past few years, then congrats, you've figured it out.

CNBC reports that Dave's was purchased by Roark Capital, which now owns a majority stake in the company. The firm owns a few holding companies (Roark owns big brands like Subway and Dunkin'), and the deal is thought to have been valued at around $1 billion. That's a ton of hot chicken. This new ownership means that Dave's Hot Chicken could potentially see growth of up to 4,000 stores in the next decade, according to its CEO, Bill Phelps — an exponential amount, compared to the more than 300 franchised locations it has right now. If you don't have Dave's Hot Chicken near you, that means you might get one sooner rather than later.

The origin story behind Dave's Hot Chicken is a dream come true for any aspiring business owner (or millionaire). The concept started as a pop-up in an East Hollywood parking lot in 2017, when three friends, including the namesake Dave Kopushyan, started cooking for people using a portable deep fryer on a few folding tables. Word of mouth, social media, and local press coverage soon gave the operation a spotlight, and one store turned into a full chain with a very tight menu of chicken tenders, sliders, bites (essentially nuggets), a vegetarian cauliflower option, and a few sides.

Drake is purportedly a fan of Dave's, and an investor (though that was in 2021), so it looks like the chain's got friends in all sorts of places. That being said, private equity firms have a pretty unfortunate record of cutting corners to juice profits; I'm not anticipating quality to necessarily improve over time even if there are more locations in the long run. Remember, private equity's all about one thing — the money — so Roark seems to think there's enough momentum in Dave's right now to become the majority stakeholder. Hopefully the quality of the food stays the same.