Founders should avoid selling restaurant brands to private equity
Todd Graves · Raising Cane's CEO Todd Graves: Building a billion-dollar brand on one menu item | Masters of Scale · May 8, 2026 · at 16:34
Todd Graves, founder and CEO of Raising Cane's, explains why he cautions entrepreneurs against private equity buyouts in the restaurant industry.
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“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 their concern is what financial return I'm gonna get, then things go bad because people are not, they're caught in that deal. If you're private equity and you need to be out of this deal in three to five years, that's your goal. When you're out and sold and made your money, there's still people that are running these restaurants whose lives are just as important as yours, their families are just as important, and now you're gone, and the next people come in, might come down and hack down again, and it's, you just see when it happens, you know, and so, There's a few out there that I've seen in our space, restaurant space, that, that do a good job and they take care of the people. Most of the time these other ones don't because it's not what they're talking about in the boardroom, right?”
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More from Todd Graves
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.”
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…”