Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers

Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers (also called Raising Cane’s) is a fast-food restaurant chain specializing in chicken fingers founded in Baton Rouge, Louisiana by Todd Graves and Craig Silvey on August 28, 1996.

Todd Graves (who attended the University of Georgia) and Craig Silvey (who attended LSU) were enrolled in a business plan writing course. Graves wrote the business plan and Silvey submitted it, for which Silvey received a C-minus. At the time, Graves worked at Guthrie’s Chicken Fingers while at UGA.[1] The business plan was rejected numerous times by potential investors, so Graves earned the needed money working as a boilermaker in a Los Angeles refinery and fishing for sockeye salmon in Alaska. He and Silvey obtained a SBA loan which they used to open the first restaurant in Baton Rouge; at the intersection of Highland Road and State Street near the LSU campus.[2][3]

In March 2020, many Cane’s locations switched from dine-in to pick-up and take away service only because of the COVID-19 pandemic, while others closed temporarily. As of July 2020, some locations had reopened their dining rooms, although Todd Graves said the company was in no rush to do so.[4]