Record Sales Of Chicken Fingers Nearly Doubles Fortune Of Raising Cane's Founder
Todd Graves (left) with country musician Parker McCollum
Raising Cane's might not sell much—chicken tenders, crinkle fries, Texas toast, coleslaw and one sauce—but it sells a whole lot of it. Last year, the fast-food chain dished out $5.1 billion worth of the stuff, its best year yet, according to 2024 financials obtained by Forbes.
That's enough to make Todd Graves, the company's founder and CEO, a whole lot richer. Forbes estimates that Graves has nearly doubled his net worth, to $17.2 billion, on the back of Cane's banner results.
In 2024, the chain opened 118 new restaurants, pushing its total stores to around 900 in 40-plus states. But what really makes Cane's the envy of the fast food world is just how many customers flock to each store. The chain—which ranked as the 22nd-biggest by revenue on last year's annual QSR 50 report—rings in $5.7 million in sales per location on average. That's more than double competitors like Zaxby's and Bojangles, and second among all major quick-service chains, behind only Chick-fil-A. EBITDA is approaching $1 billion, per the newly obtained financials.
For all that, Graves can thank his limited menu, which helps keep costs down, and the chain's rabid fanbase. Graves named the business after his yellow lab, leans heavily on social media and celebrities to promote it—including letting his friend, rapper Post Malone, design his own location in 2023—and has taken to TV to build his brand and highlight his community engagement efforts, including through Restaurant Recovery, a discovery+ limited series he created to coach independent eateries through the Covid-19 pandemic. Last fall, he appeared as a guest shark on two episodes of the hit ABC show Shark Tank, pitching his marketing savvy to contestants looking for an investor.
'I'm a social media machine,' Graves said during one successful pitch. 'I've got a whole team behind me that helps me with these things and I live it every day. I'll get your product out there and I'll help you expand it for low acquisition costs.'
Graves has come a long way to Forbes' billionaires list. A Louisiana native, his idea for a restaurant serving only chicken fingers was rejected by bankers, investors and even a college professor, who gave the concept the lowest grade in the class. So he went to work as a boilermaker in a Los Angeles oil refinery and spent 20 hour days fishing for Sockeye Salmon in Alaska to save up the cash to fund his restaurant. Using his savings and an SBA loan, he opened the first Raising Cane's near Louisiana State University's campus in 1996. Now a 900-location behemoth, Graves still insists on keeping the menu limited to just chicken fingers, a handful of sides, a single sauce and no dessert.
That simple formula has added a lot of cash to Graves' wallet. He owns around 91% of the business, according to the financials obtained by Forbes, and has paid himself at least $250 million in dividends since 2020, based on a Forbes analysis of the company's debt filings. And there seems to be plenty more where that came from.
'Our next aspiration is to be a top 10 restaurant brand in the U.S. Think of the big boys—McDonald's, Wendy's, Starbucks, Subway—companies that have been open a lot longer than we have,' Graves recently said, according to Nation's Restaurants News. 'We are going to hit $10 billion in sales, average unit volumes of $8 million, and 1,600 restaurants in all major cities and new international locations around the world. We'll have 150,000 crew members including 16,000 internal promotes. And we'll give back $100 million to communities. Imagine what we'll be able to give back to our communities once we become a top 10 brand.'
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