Dave's Hot Chicken Started in a Parking Lot. It Just Sold for $1 Billion

Dave's Hot Chicken started in an East Hollywood parking lot in 2017 and then exploded in popularity due to a news article and Instagram.

Now, only eight years later, the beloved fried chicken chain, which was founded by three childhood friends, has sold for $1 billion.

Roark Capital, which owns Subway has close a $1 billion deal to purchase Dave's Hot Chicken, according to PennLive.

Although Subway has been losing locations in the past year, the company that will own them both plans a rapid expansion of the fried chicken chain.

According to Yahoo Finance, Dave's Hot Chicken already has 310 locations, but " it has sold rights to more than 1,000 franchise locations across the US, Middle East, and Canada."

The plan is to open an additional 155 restaurant locations in 2025, Yahoo Finance reported.

Dave's Hot Chicken "started in a parking lot eight years ago," according to CNBC.

"There were three kids that wanted to support their parents and they only had $900 in savings,"' and so they did a pop-up in Hollywood and then a writer gave them a shout-out, and a line developed, CEO Bill Phelps told CNBC in an interview on the $1 billion deal.

"We timed it really well. The product is insane," said Phelps told CNBC.

Asked about the reported billion-dollar deal, he said, "It's insane. It's insane what we did... The vision of these guys was just great." He said the founder was a "marketing genius."

He praised the franchisees. "We have a team that built these other businesses, Wetzel's Pretzels and Blaze Pizza," Phelps said to CNBC. Drake and Samuel L. Jackson were investors, which helped the business take off, Phelps said.

Now the brand is in Canada, London, and Dubai, Phelps told CNBC of Dave's Hot Chicken. He said the best-performing store is in London.

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