Todd Graves
Founder and Co-CEO, Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers. On 3 shows, 5 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveinvestorhostraisingcanes.com ↗Wikipedia ↗
Todd Graves founded Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers near Louisiana State University in 1996 after funding the initial location by working as a boilermaker and commercial salmon fisherman. He has grown the chain into a fast-food empire with roughly 1,000 locations while maintaining majority ownership.
3shows
5appearances
70statements
18resolved
13supported
0contradicted
72%fully supported
16said about them ↓ Everything Todd Graves said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Graves: Most quick-service restaurant franchisees operate at 65 to 70 percent efficiency
“Our franchisees were about an 85, which is exceptional in the franchise world, because most of them, in quick service food, run at about a 65, 70.”
Graves: Company-owned restaurant chains achieve far higher valuations than franchise models
“Another advantage of having your own restaurants, company restaurants, is that your valuations are way higher, right? So your sales, your profitability, your EBITDA that goes through as you grow company restaurants, just the company's worth so much more, man.”
Graves: Incremental Cost Cuts Destroy Fast-Food Craveability
“If you start cutting a little bit here to save a penny, and you start cutting a little bit here and a little bit here, it's death by a thousand cuts. Then your food one day is not craveable. That's what's happened to so many quick service chains over the years…”
Graves: Private Equity Ruins Fast Food by Cutting Wages and Quality
“When you lose that founder personal, that this is their baby, you start making the wrong decisions right now. You really do. And so, so profit equity, they have their shareholders and they have to make a certain amount of money. They're not getting the returns…”
Graves: Leaders must stay in details and supplement before delegating
“So, I say you don't delegate, you hire great people, you help them and do it, and if they do it better than you, then you can back off, and you make sure all those components of the business, look, I'm not great at IT, I have an exceptional IT team. They do it…”
Graves: Founders should retain 100% equity to protect company vision
“If it's special to you, hold on to your equity. Take the risk, get more financing, but keep it yours because you'll always be able to protect your baby. You know what makes it work better than anybody else.”
Graves: Raising Cane's Is Valued at Over $20 Billion on 20x EBITDA
“We're trading on, not trading, we don't trade, but we're valued on over 20 times EBITDA, those company restaurants. Go into that. So the profitability that comes into all of it gets on that, that higher multiple. That's why we have the twenty billion plus valu…”
Graves: Mastering a single menu item is a recipe for success
“Being to execute on one thing, and do it better than anybody else, Is gonna be a recipe for success, and it ended up being there.”
Founders should avoid selling restaurant brands to private equity
“And the reason why I try to talk these business founders into not selling to private equity is, and look, they're not all bad. And so, I'm not talking about all of them, but a lot of them are. And look, if you have, Investors, if you have shareholders that the…”
Graves: Limited-time menu offers degrade restaurant customer service and consistency
“I've certainly saved menu for 29 years now, almost 30 years. If I had LTOs, which might spike business for a tiny bit, right, something new at Cain's, my managers would have to, like, then be putting up point of purchase materials, getting training everybody o…”
Graves: Early Cane's Scaled on 15% Subordinated Debt to Protect Equity
“So what I had was angel investors that I would do a 15% interest rate, subordinated debt. Okay. It was a one pager and I personally endorse these. I mean, if I personally signed onto it, so they knew anything I had in the world, which is all just tied up the b…”
Graves: Prioritizing High Sales Volume Generates More Profit Than Cutting Costs
“If you're sales driven, you're going to do exceptional customer service. You're gonna have more people on shift, right? And then cutting it shorter to try to save labor. You're going to, ah, you need highest quality products to do craveable, all those things t…”
Graves: Performance reviews should happen daily through coaching, not every six months
“This is how you get weeded out of Keynes corporate is the people that Can't take constant, constant coaching, and it's coaching, right? You know, it's like, well, no, we should meet every six months on a eval, and how we're doing, and blah, blah, blah, and all…”
Graves: Shaving two seconds off drive-through time yields $60M in sales
“Every two seconds that I can get faster is a point on sales. So let's just say just roughly one percent. If we do six billion in sales this year, what's one percent, six billion, that's six, sixty million dollars in sales you can do if you can tweak that, that…”
Graves: Raising Cane's customer frequency matches multi-item QSR competitors
“Our frequency is just as high. Is any other quick service restaurant, meaning how many times somebody comes back in a month period of time.”
Graves: Buying back Raising Cane's franchises increased sales and wages
“So we got way more efficient. We bought them out. We actually operated at 95. Sales went up in all the franchise markets. So literally sales went up, wages went up, everything went up, and it actually improved out better.”
Graves: Adding healthy items complicates operations without driving fast-food sales
“And if we add healthy items, people aren't going to order that anyway, and it's just going to complicate our system, meaning lettuce is produce. Produce goes bad quickly. That's going to complicate what we're trying to do, and it's not going to equate to sales…”
Graves: About 95% of Raising Cane's locations are company-owned
“Yeah, by me, I'm at like 90, I would say 95%.”
Graves: Raising Cane's $4 million AUV is second-highest in fast food
“We have, we're the second highest average unit volume in all of quick service.”
Raising Cane's bought back all franchises to achieve 100% company ownership
“So, we bought them back, they're happy to, and I'm like, a hundred percent, Company restaurant operations.”
Graves: Raising Cane's maintains frozen chicken reserves for outbreak contingencies
“So, for me, as you have, you know, we do fresh chicken, but we have frozen supply to get us through any kind of outbreak.”
Graves would shut down Raising Cane's before pivoting away from chicken
“Ultimately, if people just stop eating chicken, then I'd be extinct. I would absolutely be extinct. I wouldn't start serving steak fingers or something like that. I'd go, look, it's time for me to hang this up.”
Graves: Raising Cane's kept identical menu when entering the Middle East
“Even when we went to the Middle East, we kept the product exactly the same. We kept the same thing, and there was a lot of talk there about, there's another sauce they have there. It's like a mayo base and garlic and all this stuff. It's the most popular sauce…”
The other half of the tape: Todd Graves's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 16 times in 4 episodes across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most David Senra 9John Mackey 6Joey Cornell 1
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
David Senra 15
How I Built This 1
2026 15 mentions in 3 episodes 5 per episode
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Todd's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | Founder and Co-CEO, Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers | 3 | 28 | 60% 3/5 | full record on How I Built This → |
| DAVID SENRALEDGER | Founder and Co-CEO, Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers | 1 | 25 | 86% 6/7 | full record on David Senra → |
 MASTERS OF SCALELEDGER | Founder and Co-CEO, Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers | 1 | 17 | 67% 4/6 | full record on Masters of Scale → |