I don't know what part of this headline depresses me the most: "52-year-old worked 90-hour weeks in an oil refinery to save money for his business—now he's worth $9.5 billion"
I don't know what part of this headline depresses me the most: "52-year-old worked 90-hour weeks in an oil refinery to save money for his business—now he's worth $9.5 billion"
Todd Graves, the co-founder and co-CEO of Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers, is an unlikely billionaire. Here's how he built his business.
The 90-hour weeks part?
The fact that he was doing it for a fossil fuel company?
The fact that he's worth fucking $9.5 billion?
Also, not in the headline, but-
The fact that he did it back in the 90s when you could actually successfully open a small business and make money from it as if it's relevant today?
The business is a franchise called Raising Caine's Chicken, which I've never had, but if you go by Yelp reviews, it's either the best restaurant that has ever existed or pretty mediocre.
Also, Wikipedia says very little about his early life, but apparently his parents could afford to send him to a private catholic school, so he didn't exactly grow up improverished.
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Raising Canes - “if you don’t like our 1 sauce flavor tough shit!”
Yeah, I looked at the menu and it seemed surprisingly limited, especially for a fast food chain.
Here it is:
That's their entire menu.
Culver's: We have all food ever created for sale right now on our 80-page menu. Have fun at our drive-through.
Raising Cane's: Fuck you, you have five options and all of them are chicken fingers.
I'll take small menu ordering every time. If we're all getting the same thing and the choice is quantity, it'll likely be fresh.
Yeah but it's literally one thing. Chicken fingers. They better be damn good chicken fingers. And I find that hard to imagine.
Please remember it's fast food. Are the chicken fingers amazing? No but they are good enough so that they are amazing with the sauce. Everything on the menu is just different textures for shoveling more sauce into your face.
Well you better like their sauce because, as was said above, you only get one choice there too.
Kind of feels like this classic SNL sketch... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=puJePACBoIo
It's a pretty good sauce. Here's the recipe as close as I can tell.
3/4 cup real mayonnaise
3 Tablespoons ketchup
5 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce* (1 Tablespoon + 2 teaspoons)
1 Tablespoon hot sauce
1 teaspoon garlic powder
3/4 teaspoon freshly cracked black pepper
Pinch celery salt
It's also good on burgers, sandwiches, and fried seafood.
They are not.
Cane’s is pretty dammed good for chicken. Always freshly cooked.
Cane's is/was being smart here. One of the biggest issues that a startup restaurant can have is attempting to carry "everything." Do one or two things really really well, and have some extras that require basically no prep. This also helps reduce cleanup later.
It's not a startup at this point.
No, but when they were a startup, that was certainly a consideration. As for now, well, why change a formula that clearly works?
Aren't companies generally supposed to diversify in order to grow past a certain size? I mean obviously it worked out, but I thought that was the rule of thumb.
Diversification can be done on the back end of the business, doesn't need to be customer facing. I'm certain that the founder has a healthy stock portfolio with his net worth.
I have yet to see an example of a business diversifying and not getting worse. Find one thing you're good at and do it well. Leave other things to other businesses.