How is it that a restaurant that only does chicken strips has been
rapidly expanding all over the United States and even into the Middle East?
And how did the person who came up with this multi-million dollar
business get started when he had no money, and no funding?
Well, it involves risking his life in Alaska to catch salmon,
and trying to prove his business professor wrong who told him the idea would never work.
This is the crazy underdog success story of Raising Cane’s.
After working in a variety of restaurants through highschool
and college, Todd Graves had always had a dream of starting his own restaurant.
And whilst he was at university, he took a business class where students were asked to
come up with a business idea, and then make a business plan for it.
Todd was ecstatic about this, because it gave him the chance to properly
plan out his restaurant idea, and have it evaluated by a professor.
Todd teamed up with his best friend Craig for the project,
and explained his idea. What if they created a restaurant that only did one thing,
but did it the best? They could keep costs down by having the menu be as simple as possible,
focusing on one easy dish, so there were no errors and it was always perfect.
Craig liked the idea as well, and since both Todd and Craig loved chicken fingers,
they decided that would be the perfect product to go for.
They both began pouring their time and energy into the planning of this
chicken finger dream. Todd envisioned a place where people could come in,
listen to good music, and eat good chicken. A place where the workers enjoyed coming to
work and genuinely cared about the business and wanted it to succeed.
The dream was there, and after Todd and Craig spent many long days planning and writing out
their model, and pricing up exactly what they would need, they excitedly turned in their
final project to their professor. They’d worked so hard on it, and were sure they’d get an A.
However, when they got the paper back, they’d got the lowest marks in the whole class. They
were crushed, and Todd wanted answers. After class he confronted the professor
and asked what was wrong with the idea to give it the lowest mark out of everyone.
The professor said the idea was just too simple. There was no way that a restaurant only serving
one dish would be able to make it. Especially when they’d chosen chicken fingers which wasn’t
very unique and had big competitors like KFC and Popeyes, who also offered other dishes as well.
Todd and Craig, despite how confident they were in
their concept and how deserving they felt of an A, were forced to accept the grade.
But this didn’t deter Todd. He wasn’t going to let some professor in a business class,
or anyone else, tell him that his dream couldn’t be done. He vowed he would open
his restaurant, and make it a success. So, Todd began to go to various banks,
hoping to be able to take out a loan so he could get the funding required.
However, every bank gave him the same response his professor had:
it was a bad idea, wasn’t innovative enough, and wouldn’t work.
Still, even after banks kept telling him no and rejecting his loan applications,
Todd didn’t lose any determination; if anything it made him want to prove them wrong.
If the banks wouldn’t help him, then he would find another way to get the money.
To get the funds to start his restaurant,
Todd began to apply to decent paying jobs all over the country. After a while,
he was able to get a job as a boilermaker in southern California. The pay was good enough,
so without a second thought Todd packed up his things and moved halfway across the country.
As a boilermaker, Todd’s job was to go around California and repair steam boilers,
boiler furnaces, and boiler frames. The job was hard, and the hours long - as he
worked about ninety hours a week, but Todd was saving money for his dream.
Between and after shifts, he’d be too tired to do much else, and would stop at the fast
food chain In-And-Out. There, he got to see an example of his idea in practice.
In-And-Out only served burgers, and not even a large variety of burgers,
just a hamburger, cheeseburger, or a double.
During his long days of fixing boilers, seeing In-And-Out’s success provided the motivation for
Todd to keep working hard and saving money so he could reach his own fast food dreams.
However, even though Todd was saving every penny he could,
he was a little frustrated at how long saving up was taking him. So after working
as a boilermaker for a while, Todd found out about commercial salmon fishing in Alaska.
The pay was amazing, but the job was incredibly dangerous and would require him to go way out
onto the cold Pacific Ocean to get the Sockeye Salmon they were looking for.
He thought about it for sometime, weighing his options, but at the end of the day the
pay was really good, and what’s a dream if you’re not willing to risk something for it?
So, after moving to the dry scorching heat of southern California, Todd was
now moving to the freezing lands of Alaska so he could work as a commercial fisherman.
If he thought that being a boilermaker was hard,
he was in for a rude awakening when he got onto his first fishing vessel.
Between the ice cold salty water drenching him all hours of the day, the horribly chilling wind,
and the twenty hour work days that were spent out in the ocean, Todd was out of his element.
However, any resentment he felt towards the job,
or himself for taking it, evaporated when he saw that first paycheck.
Alaska’s commercial salmon fishing industry makes an average profit of $230 million dollar a year,
and although the work is brutal, they compensate their employees well.
Todd could see his dream, which had once been on the distant horizon, suddenly jump much closer
to him. He knew he just had to stick with the Alaska job a bit longer. And thus, he continued
to endure the harsh conditions, and continued to save up the majority of his paychecks.
The banks might not help him start his restaurant, but sockeye salmon fishing would.
After
working on the Alaskan fisheries for what felt like forever,
Todd finally saved up enough money to move back to his home city,,
and start his first restaurant. His dream was about to become a reality.
He bought a long since deserted bakery which had become a warehouse outside of Louisiana
State University, figuring college students would love chicken fingers.
The place was in shambles and had been deserted for ages, so Todd had his work cut out for him.
He realized, with the state the building was in, it would cost a lot of money to hire people to do
the renovations that needed to be done, which he hadn’t really budgeted for. In the spirit
of the rest of this whole journey, he decided he would simply do the renovations himself.
Luckily for Todd, he had good friends who all agreed to help him build his restaurant. Craig,
who was still in Louisiana, came out and helped him in this endeavor,
and they spent long days at the warehouse tearing down walls and putting up new ones,
ripping up floorboards, and installing all the necessary equipment for a restaurant to
run - quite literally building Raising Cane’s by hand from the ground up.
And when removing the old plaster from walls, they actually found the original brick with
the logo of the bakery this warehouse had once been. Todd decided to keep it,
and it would serve as the inspiration for the design of the logo of his
own restaurant… Which Todd still needed to come up with a name for.
He initially wanted to call it Sockeye’s Chicken Fingers, in memory of the fish he
had spent so much time chasing around Alaska to get the funds to start this business. That idea,
however, was quickly shot down by his friends who said it was a horrible name for a chicken
finger place. One friend pointed out that everyone would think he sold sockeye salmon,
when in fact the absolute only thing on the menu was chicken fingers. Todd
had to agree that he could see the issue of that name, but then what would he call it?
Well, since removing back home, Todd had gotten a lovable golden retriever which he had named
Raising Cane, as a play on words of the old saying “to raise cain,” which means to cause a ruckus.
His dog Raising Cane always came to the warehouse with Todd to do work and
would run around keeping everyone’s spirits high.
During the discussion on what to name the restaurant,
one of Todd's friends suggested just naming the restaurant after the dog,
which seemed like a better idea than Sockeye’s Chicken Fingers at least.
Todd loved the idea, and even took it a step further - What if he didn’t just name the
restaurant after his beloved dog, but he made the dog the face of it? Raising Cane could be
the mascot as well as the namesake. As he thought about it more, it just felt right. He was excited.
And thus, his restaurant became known as Raising Cane’s. They were finally ready for business.
After much hard work and effort, the first Raising Cane’s opened in 1996 when Todd was
just twenty-four. On their first day of opening, the community came out in a big
way to show their support. The restaurant was packed all day, and more and more people were
constantly spilling in to get chicken fingers. They had opened their doors that morning,
but with how busy it was weren’t able to close till 3:30 AM. After that first day,
where Todd worked in any position he could from fry cook to cashier to manager, he took stock
of his restaurant. He hoped this successful first day would be an omen for things to come.
Given that their first location was close to his old university,
he also wondered if his old business professor who’d rejected the idea had seen the huge demand.
Because, as planned, Todd had focused on just having one thing on his menu - one
thing that he did the best - and that was the chicken fingers. He’d searched out the highest
quality chicken for his chicken fingers, and then spent countless hours perfecting
a secret sauce to go with them. For sides, he incorporated coleslaw, crinkle-cut fries,
and Texas toast. It was very simple, but exactly what he’d always hoped it would be.
However, the full vision Todd had for his restaurant, of everything being very chilled
and fun, would not be accomplished with the normal cut throat attitude of the restaurant industry.
Todd had worked multiple jobs at restaurants himself growing up, and thus was very well
aware of the amount of stress that often came with it, so Todd decided to take a different approach.
For example, staff were allowed to wear jeans and t-shirts if they wanted to and
could play any music they felt like in the store. Todd also believed that putting the
employees’ well being first would make the staff generally more joyful which would mean better
customer service - and he wasn’t wrong; reviews started pouring in talking about the kindness
of the people who worked there. This idea that treating staff as a priority which would thus
make customer service better and the employees better at their jobs was so successful that it
became a quintessential part of what made Raising Cane’s unique and further elevated its reputation.
Everything was finally coming together, and they were even able to get a small business
association loan that would help them scale. Todd smiled as he remembered a few years ago when
the banks all rejected him saying his business would surely fail. Things were now looking up.
Todd was CEO, but continued to work in the store at their first location, which he lovingly called
“The Mothership.”, and appointed his friend Craig to be the co-CEO and help them expand.
In Raising Cane’s first month of being open, they had a profit of thirty dollars - whilst that’s not
much at all, Todd was over the moon about it. That meant that he was able to pay the mortgage on the
building, all his bills for the restaurant, and his employees’ wages, and still have a very small
amount of money left over. Most importantly, it showed this business model could actually work.
Todd also had one more idea though… you see Bob Marley was one of his favourite musicians,
and Todd and Craig had joked that chicken fingers was their one love. So Todd thought to himself,
why not make the famous Bob Marley Song one love the slogan for Raising
Cane’s? It was a lighthearted idea, but it ended up having serious consequences.
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By 2001, Raising Cane’s was using the slogan “One Love” to express their love for chicken fingers,
and the fact they focused on just that one product. By 2005,
they officially trademarked it as they began to build more and more stores. In 2006,
they won the National Restaurant Association’s Good Neighbor award for Todd’s projects in giving
back to the community and his philanthropy, and in 2007 Raising Cane’s received “Best Place To Work”
recognition in Chain Leader magazine. Business was booming, and Todd couldn’t be any happier
with the business, his staff, or the slogan that honored one of his favorite musicians.
However, then disaster struck. After years of success and years using the slogan,
in 2013 Raising Cane’s was sued by Fifty-Six Hope Road Music,
a company that was founded by Marley’s heirs that controls the rights of the
late reggae star’s photographs, music, and sayings. Todd had been successfully able to
get “One Love” trademarked for Raising Cane’s to use in certain circumstances,
whilst Fifty-Six Hope Road Music got control of it in other circumstances due to their own trademark.
And thus for many years, there had been no issue. And then one day,
Todd got sued by Fifty-Six Hope Road Music.
This was doubly troubling for Todd. Not only was his business slogan at
risk which they used in loads of their ads, it was quite distressing as an avid music
lover and giant fan of Bob Marley, that he was being sued over this.
The lawsuit started in December of 2013, and Todd met constantly with Bob Marley’s daughter,
for the better part of five months as they tried to reach some sort of agreement. Finally,
in May of 2014, they were able to reach a settlement that they both found mutually
beneficial and allowed both of them to continue to use the phrase “One Love.”
At the conclusion of the lawsuit, Todd was relieved to be able to put
the legal troubles behind him and go back to expanding his restaurant. Unfortunately,
he would soon be facing a much bigger threat to his business.
With Raising Cane’s ongoing success, Todd began to expand more and more all over the country. He
continued to build stores all through Louisiana and the rest of The South, and expanded up to
the Midwest as well, and eventually went out to southern California - this in particular gave
him a lot of joy, as this was the state he’d lived and worked in when he started saving
money for this dream of his, the state that housed In-And-Out, which had been his motivator, and now,
it finally had Raising Cane’s. Despite the lawsuit and the settlement, things were going good.
Raising Cane’s eventually had the opportunity to expand to the Middle East,
but before that happened Todd took time personally to change the recipe to make
sure that all the products were up to standard for Islamic dietary restrictions,
also known as Halal. After tweaking the recipe to just make sure it was edible for everyone,
the first Raising Cane’s opened in Kuwait, with soon more expanding all over the Middle East.
For years, the business continued to do well. Those days of fishing in the cold of
Alaska or working steam boilers in the heat of California seemed a very distant memory.
It was now 2020, and Raising Cane’s seemed in a position to keep growing to the top.
And then the event that devastated the restaurant industry as a whole happened;
COVID-19 spread across the world, closing restaurant after restaurant down.
Raising Cane’s was somewhat lucky, because they had drive-thrus which
flourished during the pandemic, but they were still losing money. Sales were down
30% and their whole business model involved making small margins on large volumes. Todd
was beginning to worry that he was going to have to make some very hard decisions.
Todd’s philosophy had always been to put his employees first,
and was extremely reluctant to start closing down stores and forcing his
employees to go out into the poor job market during the brunt of the pandemic.
So firstly, Todd made the decision he wouldn’t take a salary that year. Instead,
he focused all his attention on making sure his employees
stayed employed and trying to keep open as many stores as he could.
Raising Cane’s changed their marketing to let customers know that restaurants were still able
to serve food, firstly with their drive thru’s and then later with enhanced safety measures.
Some Raising Cane’s didn’t have drive-thrus though,
and so Todd led the company to turn those locations into mask making facilities and
paid his staff to make those masks to help prevent the spread of the virus.
Todd took the pandemic very seriously and wanted to do everything in his power
to make sure his staff and customers were both safe. Due to all of his precautions,
Raising Cane’s was eventually rated the number one fast casual dining restaurant
for COVID-19 response and commitment to safety. And somehow, they managed to make
it through without needing the layoffs and closures like many other businesses.
Todd said: “I started this business from scratch.
It’s a part of me. This is my family. I don’t want to leave anybody behind.”
And so, to return to the original question of how Raising Cane’s has
achieved success against all the odds - it seems clear that part of the reason
has been Todd’s commitment to his employees and customers, and treating everyone fairly. Plus,
despite many suggestions to change or add menu items, Todd has always kept
the same menu and same recipe, building a reputation for quality and consistency.
Right from the start, Todd had a simple but clear vision of a restaurant that
served high quality chicken fingers, in a fun relaxed atmosphere. And as
Raising Cane’s expansion continues, it’s clear he’s most definitely succeeded.
But, what about his big competitor, KFC? You see, unlike Todd, KFC’s founder Colonel Sanders
ended up hating the business he created - in fact Colonel Sanders sued KFC. And KFC also sued him.
It all got very messy but it does make for an incredible story - and you can watch that right
now by clicking the thumbnail on screen. I’ll see you over in the KFC video in a second. Cheers.