Dave’s Hot Chicken president Jim Bitticks remembers visiting restaurants five years ago and asking cofounder Dave Kopushyan what he thinks the brand will be someday.
His answer? “We won’t sell until it’s a billion.”
Bitticks didn’t think much of the lofty goal at the time. But in 2025, the 315-unit fast casual finds itself with a $1 billion valuation and a majority investment from Roark Capital, one of the biggest private equity players in the restaurant space.
“Those are difficult decisions to make of when to do a deal, but we had grown. We were growing so fast, and we felt that this was the time that we got a really great valuation, and Roark is the company to help us take this to a worldwide brand,” says CEO Bill Phelps. “Roark is the largest restaurant company in the United States. They have the connections, they have the purchasing power, and then they have franchisees around the world with all of these companies, and so we will be going to them and opening up the opportunity for Dave’s all around the world.”
Dave’s, founded in 2017 by childhood friends Kopushyan, Arman Oganesyan, and Tommy Rubenyan, started with $900 and a parking lot pop-up in East Hollywood. The brand became an instant sensation, and a couple of years later, it brought on Phelps—the former CEO of Wetzel’s Pretzels and Blaze Pizza—to begin franchising.
Since then, Dave’s has grown swiftly. After opening roughly 80 stores each in 2023 and 2024, the plan is to open 155 to 165 locations this year and around the same in 2026. The fast casual is working through a pipeline of over 1,000 franchise locations across the U.S., the Middle East, and Canada.
To Phelps, economies of scale have made expansion easier to handle.
“We went from seven to 40 restaurants in a year, and that was hard,” Phelps says. “We’re going to open up 155 restaurants. We opened up seven restaurants in a single day, and you know what? It’s not that hard. And Jim Bitticks is one of the great operations people in the entire industry, and he has a team that has this down. They know how to do this. The franchisees are trained to open their own restaurants, and so we’ve got a system that’s working, and it’s a well-oiled machine. So the 155—way easier than that 35, five years ago.”
Roark—which chased Dave’s for years before a deal was solidified—may understand growth as well as anyone. The firm is not only invested in Inspire Brands (parent of Arby’s, Baskin Robbins, Buffalo Wild Wings, Dunkin’, Jimmy John’s, and Sonic), but also GoTo Foods ( Auntie Anne’s, Carvel, Cinnabon, Jamba, McAlister’s, Moe’s, and Schlotzsky’s), The Cheesecake Factory, Hardee’s, Carl’s Jr., and Culver’s. In April 2024, it finalized a nearly $10 billion purchase of Subway.
With Roark now in the picture, little is changing for Dave’s. The executive team will remain in place as will the founders. Oganesyan is still the chief brand officer and Kopushyan the chief culinary officer.
“Just the way they saw the potential in keeping the founders, Roark saw the potential that this is the team that got it to this level, so it wouldn’t be very smart to come in and change anything,” Oganesyan says. “Like the Lakers with Phil [Jackson], Shaq [O’Neal] and Kobe [Bryant]. You don’t want to change that.”
The chain’s roughly 75 franchisees were initially nervous about the acquisition, Oganesyan says, but fears were mitigated once they learned the leadership team was staying in place and there would be no change to the quality of the product. Most of the expansion is coming from existing operators that are attracted to the under two-year payback, 25 percent margin, and simple chicken tender product. Several franchisees have signed up for two or three additional territories.
“One of the original founders said to me, ‘Bill, how are you gonna maintain this quality as you grow across the country?'” Phelps says. “The answer is [a few] things. What these guys created is something that is great and replicable. What [Bitticks] and his team do is they’ve systematized it with distributors and products and processes that are incredibly disciplined to deliver the same product, and then the franchisees are absolutely phenomenal and we hold them accountable to run the stores to the standard—every store, every day. That’s what we do. And we have Yelp and Google scores on a daily basis so we know if there are any issues out there. We have secret shoppers with cameras that go in and see what the guest experience is like. And we have all kinds of systems in place to ensure the quality of the food safety on an ongoing basis in every store. So we put in the systems that allowed us to do this.”
According to Bitticks, the brand has maintained its momentum because it’s never strayed away from what made it work in the first place. Once Phelps and his team became involved, they leaned into the founders’ philosophies instead of pushing them out of the way. As Bitticks puts it, “There’s a DNA that entrepreneurs have that you can’t replace.” For instance, the ability to be seen on social media. Dave’s has 1.8 million followers on Instagram, which is more than Wendy’s. It also has 3.6 million followers on TikTok.
At the same time, Bitticks and Phelps entered the fray with a successful franchising model from Wetzel’s and Blaze. By the time operators open their third store, they’re certified to open the fourth on their own with corporate in a supporting role. That’s how Dave’s is able to unveil seven to eight restaurants in a day. Bitticks says there’s a future when the brand debuts 10 units in a single day.
The next frontier is nontraditional restaurants. In two months, Dave’s will open at the Harry Reid International Airport in Las Vegas. The brand will also come to college campuses nationwide.
The obvious objective for Dave’s is to feed more customers around the world, but Phelps believes the chain is also reaching for a higher purpose.
“This is a vehicle to transform people’s lives,” Phelps says. “That’s what we’ve done. We’ve made 25 of our people millionaires in the last week. That’s what it’s about, and it’s real. That’s why we have zero turnover. It’s a great environment because of that.”
