Masters of Scale Raising Cane’s secret recipe for scaling, with CEO Todd Graves
6 snips
May 7, 2026 
Todd Graves, founder and co-CEO of Raising Cane’s, built a national chicken-fingers chain with a culture-first approach. He recounts hustle-funded beginnings, why they kept a tiny, scratch-made menu, and the choice to favor company-run stores over heavy franchising. He also covers supply-chain redundancy, guerrilla marketing stunts, and bringing in a co-CEO to strengthen leadership.
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Stick To One Craveable Thing
- Focus on doing one craveable thing extremely well rather than adding variety to please every customer.
- Todd modeled this on intuition and examples like In-N-Out and decided depth of execution beats menu breadth for repeat visits.
Raised Startup Cash With Grueling Work And Investors
- After bank rejections Todd worked 90-hour weeks as a boilermaker and fished in Alaska to raise startup capital.
- That grit convinced small local investors to contribute $5k–$10k each and enabled an SBA loan.
Hire Local Leaders To Root The Brand
- Enter communities by hiring local leaders and crews who care about the community and the team.
- Raising Cane's sends crews to help set up culture and training but hires local operators to run restaurants day-to-day.