Quickly Growing, Nashville-Style Hot Chicken Concept To Open 7 Stores In St. Louis Region

Original Article By: St. Louis Business Journal

Dave’s Hot Chicken will open seven eateries in the St. Louis region, with hopes to open at least one location by the end of this year.

The Hari Group, a Naperville, Illinois-based franchise and real estate development group, hopes to open all seven of its in-development Dave’s Hot Chicken locations in the St. Louis metro in the next four years, President Raj Patel said.

The company is “actively looking” at real estate and “trading papers on a few deals,” Patel said. He declined to share specifically in which municipalities the group hopes to open its restaurants, but he offered that the company has looked at properties in both Missouri and Illinois.

“I wouldn’t say that we’re targeting specific cities,” Patel said. “We’re targeting specific real estate.”

The group is ideally looking for endcap retail spaces — a term for those located at the end of a row of stores or a shopping center — that are between 2,500 square feet and 3,500 square feet, and in “high-energy centers,” he said. A retail space with a drive-thru would be preferred but isn’t necessary, he added.

Patel said he hopes the group’s first St. Louis-area location will open before the end of this year. For that to happen, he said the company will need to finalize a lease in the next 30 days or so, and construction will need to go off without a hitch.

The Hari Group, which already operates several Dave’s Hot Chicken locations throughout Illinois, is working with Rick Spector of Brentwood-based real estate agency L3 Corp. to secure its real estate, Patel said.

Dave’s Hot Chicken estimates the initial investment required to open a restaurant is between $619,800 and $1.96 million, company materials show. Patel declined to share how much The Hari Group expects to spend on the buildout of its St. Louis-area restaurants, citing that there are too many variables to consider seeing as the company still hasn’t finalized any leases.

“You really don’t know what costs are going into a market. You have to take them deal by deal,” Patel said.

A “vanilla box” endcap, a new space unblemished space, “costs substantially more than second-gen restaurant space,” he said.

Dave’s Hot Chicken requires its franchisees to develop five or more restaurants at a time, have $2.5 million in liquid assets and a net worth of at least $5 million, according to its website.

Founded in Hollywood in 2017, Dave’s Hot Chicken is known for its jumbo chicken sliders and tenders, which are served at seven different spice levels with sides such as its house-made kale slaw, mac and cheese or French fries.

The concept since its founding has quickly gained in popularity and expanded to more than 700 franchise locations in the U.S., Canada and the Middle East. It plans to open another 90-plus restaurants in 2024. The company, which announced earlier this year that R&B singer Usher partnered with a franchise group to bring the concept to Atlanta, is backed by several high-profile investors, including rapper Drake, actor Samuel L. Jackson, and former National Football League player and TV personality Michael Strahan.