OC’s got the hots for Nashville hot chicken.
The popularity of the dish has paved the way for plenty of interest among landlords in bringing hot chicken concepts to their properties.
LAB Holding LLC founder and CEO Shaheen Sadeghi’s The Lab Anti-Mall in Costa Mesa is the latest.
The retail center’s brought the first Baba’s Chicken to OC, marking the concept’s first expansion outside of its roots in the Inland Empire.
Baba’s, started by University of Riverside accounting major Mike Hemwood, began as a Rancho Cucamonga pop-up, turning heads with its two-hour long wait times. It later opened its first permanent standalone space in downtown Riverside at the Riverside Food Lab on Market Street.
Seems as though expansion made sense with reviewers online writing about making treks to Riverside from as far away as Fontana, Tustin, Irvine and other cities.
Another concept, Dave’s Hot Chicken, also got its start as a pop-up and it’s turned to OC, among other markets, for growth through franchising.
The company’s got six locations currently open, mostly in the Los Angeles area. A Fountain Valley location on Warner Avenue is on its way. The summer saw the company ink a six-unit deal with sisters Angela and Mariam El Haj—whose family operates several Orange County IHOP locations—to open Dave’s restaurants in Irvine, Orange and Tustin.
That followed a deal signed in July with Carolyne Canady for five OC locations under Huntington Beach-based OC Hot Chicken LLC. Canady’s got franchising experience backing up her hot chicken play having previously served as president of international and chief development officer of Pasadena-based Blaze Pizza LLC. She helped take that concept from one to 350 locations and $400 million in revenue. She’s also a former director of franchise sales for Buffalo Wild Wings.
OC hasn’t been starved for hot chicken options with a pretty robust offering already serving fans of the fare: Hotties in Orange, Clyde’s Hot Chicken in Fullerton, The Crack Shack in Costa Mesa and Cluck Kitchen in Irvine to name a few.
