Raising Cane’s said it will open 12 new restaurants in November, a burst of growth that pushes the chicken chain into 10 states at once and gives it first-time locations in Brick, New Jersey, Fayetteville, North Carolina, and Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Two of the openings are scheduled for Nov. 2, though the company has not named both locations in its full rollout.
The pace matters because Raising Cane’s is not expanding from a small base. It already has about 1,000 U.S. locations, and the new openings add to a run that included 100 new restaurants last year and seven more in October. Some of those October openings were in Wisconsin, Oregon and Georgia, showing the company has been pushing beyond its familiar strongholds and into more parts of the country at a steady clip.
That growth is visible in the map as much as the count. The November openings are spread across New Jersey, North Carolina, South Dakota, Alabama, California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Michigan and Utah, with the new-market debuts in Brick, Fayetteville and Sioux Falls standing out as the clearest sign of where the chain wants to be next. A company spokesperson called the November launch another milestone in Raising Cane’s continued growth and said the openings would help expand its footprint to more communities nationwide.
Still, the numbers also show how much farther the chain has to go if Todd Graves wants Raising Cane’s to become a top 10 restaurant brand in the United States. It is already a major player, but it ranks 16th by sales, which makes the November schedule look less like a finish line than a marker on a longer push. The chain’s strongest base remains concentrated in a few states, including Texas with 201 stores, California with 147, Ohio with 65 and Louisiana with 63.
Raising Cane’s, which is based in Louisiana and is known for chicken fingers, Canes Sauce and Texas toast, has been widening its reach in other visible ways too, including its first airport restaurant at Dallas Fort Worth International in Terminal B, Gate B19. The November openings suggest the company is still moving fast, but the open question is whether that pace can carry it from broad expansion to the kind of scale Graves has said he wants.
