Todd Graves

A business-plan professor at the University of Georgia gave the chicken-finger concept a B-minus and told Graves it would not work; the banks in Baton Rouge agreed with the professor. The restaurant he opened anyway made about 30 dollars in its first month and now does roughly 6 billion dollars a year.¹

Todd Graves is the founder and co-CEO of Raising Cane's, a quick-service restaurant chain built around a single menu combo of chicken fingers, fries, Texas toast, coleslaw, and Cane's Sauce. He opened the first location in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1996 and has grown it, without ever selling equity to outside investors, into one of the largest privately held restaurant companies in the United States.

Background

Graves was born in New Orleans and raised in Baton Rouge, attending the Episcopal School of Baton Rouge before earning a business degree from the University of Georgia. As a child he ran a lemonade stand, cut grass, and built a haunted house for money. He briefly considered scriptwriting for television and film before turning to business. At Georgia, working with his longtime friend Craig Silvey on a business-plan class project, Graves wrote up a concept called "Folly's Chicken Fingers," a single-item chicken-finger restaurant. The professor gave it a B-minus and told him the concept would not work.

Getting started

Graves took the rejected concept seriously rather than abandoning it. Banks in Baton Rouge turned him down one after another. To raise the money himself, he worked long weeks as a boilermaker in Louisiana oil refineries, then in 1992, at age 22, flew and hitchhiked to Naknek, Alaska, to commercial-fish for sockeye salmon, living in a tent on the tundra and working long shifts on a 32-foot boat. He financed the first restaurant with a Small Business Administration loan of about $90,000, additional money raised informally from coworkers and other small backers, and credit cards carrying high interest. He modeled the concept on Harry Snyder's In-N-Out Burger, the idea that a restaurant could do one thing better than any competitor, and used that comparison to win over lenders. He rebuilt the original building largely by himself, doing the plumbing, construction, and resurfacing, and uncovered an old bakery mural on the site that became the basis of the company's logo. The restaurant, opened near the North Gates of Louisiana State University in 1996, posted a profit of about $30 in its first month.¹ Silvey, his co-founder, was drawn more to finance and later left amicably once it became clear operations were Graves's calling and not his.

What he built

Raising Cane's kept its menu to essentially one meal for its entire history, a decision Graves frames as focus rather than simplicity: the chicken is cooked to order on a single line with no heat lamps or holding time, letting the chain post service times around two minutes and thirty-five seconds at the counter and drive-through, a speed Graves says management treats as a meaningful driver of same-store sales.¹ The chain grew for about a decade partly through franchising, then Graves bought back every franchised location after concluding, based on the company's internal performance scorecard, that company-run restaurants consistently outperformed franchised ones.¹ Since then Cane's has not franchised in the United States; partners instead receive phantom equity tied to their location's performance, while international units, including in the Middle East, operate through partners such as the Alshaya Group. The chain survived Hurricane Katrina in 2005, when 21 of its 28 restaurants closed and the company was carrying debt Graves later called excessive; it reopened New Orleans first and adopted stricter leverage limits afterward, and it expanded through the COVID-19 pandemic by building out drive-through lanes early. Marketing has centered on the founder himself and on fan partnerships rather than paid mass campaigns: athletes including Joe Burrow, Saquon Barkley, and Jaden Daniels have appeared in Cane's promotion tied to name, image, and likeness deals, and musician Post Malone, a longtime customer, redesigned and shares profit on two locations that Graves says run well above their prior sales.² By 2025 the chain had grown to roughly 900 locations across more than 40 states, about $6 billion in annual sales, close to 75,000 employees, and a valuation above $20 billion, second among quick-service chains in average sales per restaurant behind Chick-fil-A.² Graves has said he still holds well over 90 percent ownership and carries roughly $3 billion in debt used to fund growth without diluting his stake.

How he operates

Graves describes himself in blunt operator terms: "I'm a fry-cooking cashier, that's what I live to do."¹ He says his preferred workday is still to come into a restaurant and run a shift. He calls the company's headquarters a "restaurant support office," not a corporate office, and says he does not believe in delegation in the conventional sense: hiring someone competent means supplementing their performance toward his own standard, not stepping back from the details. He has refused repeated pressure to sell to private equity or take the company public, arguing a founder-owned company is "your baby" and that an outside operator, including a franchisee, is never going to run it with the same intensity. That combination, hands-on operating habit paired with resistance to outside ownership, places him within the Fanatical Owner-Operator archetype. Graves also frames the business in terms of purpose rather than profit, describing it as work he believes he was suited to do to help people, and pointing to eventual free cash flow as a vehicle for philanthropic giving.

Where things stand

As of the mid-2020s, Graves remains chairman and shares the CEO title with a co-CEO he has called a stronger operator than himself, while saying he still stays close to daily operating details. Raising Cane's kept opening around 100 restaurants a year through 2024 and 2025, a pace Graves says is deliberately capped to protect food quality, crew training, and community involvement rather than maximized.² Forbes valued his personal fortune at roughly $17 billion in early 2025 and above $20 billion later that year, one of the wealthiest self-made restaurateurs in the country. He was named Grand Marshal of the Super Bowl LIX parade in New Orleans, his hometown, in early 2025. The company has signaled no plan for an IPO or sale, and Graves frames long-term succession, not an exit, as the open question facing the business.

Key facts

• Founded Raising Cane's in Baton Rouge in 1996 after a business-plan course at Georgia gave the concept a B-minus and Louisiana banks rejected his loans.
• Self-funded the first restaurant through refinery boilermaker work and a summer of sockeye fishing in Naknek, Alaska; first month's profit was about $30.
• Bought back every franchisee roughly a decade in after company-run restaurants outperformed franchised ones on his internal quality scorecard.
• Built the chain to roughly $6 billion in annual sales and a valuation above $20 billion, while retaining more than 90 percent personal ownership.
• Survived Hurricane Katrina, which closed 21 of 28 restaurants in 2005, and adopted stricter debt limits afterward.
• Partnered with musician Post Malone on two profit-share, artist-designed locations running roughly 30 percent above their prior sales.