Frankfort has a new place to sweat through dinner. Dave's Hot Chicken opened its doors on Oct. 16 at 2500 Vandalay Drive, Suite 105, inside The Paddocks of Frankfort development, bringing the chain's spice-ladder tenders and sliders to a corner of town that's rapidly filling up with national retail and restaurant names.
The new restaurant sits next to the recently opened Target and near a planned BJ's Wholesale Club, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader. It's also in the same shopping center where McAlister's Deli opened on Oct. 12 — and as it turns out, that's not a coincidence. Both restaurants are owned by the same local operator, Charles Corley, who also runs Dave's locations in Lexington, Jeffersonville, Indiana, and St. Matthews in Louisville.
Corley isn't stopping at four. He told the Herald-Leader he's targeting 10 Dave's Hot Chicken locations across the Lexington-Louisville area, with a Georgetown restaurant close to finalized and a Richmond site also under consideration. Asked why he keeps betting on the brand, Corley said chicken is popular and plenty of restaurant concepts are built around it, and that street art decorating the walls helps the Dave's locations stand apart from competitors.
What's On The Menu
The Frankfort location is open daily from 11 a.m. to around 11 p.m., serving sliders, mini-sliders, tenders, or combinations of sliders and tenders. The tenders come on a slice of bread with a side of Dave's sauce, and everything on the menu comes with pickles, the Herald-Leader reports. Sides round out the order with crinkle-cut fries, kale slaw and mac and cheese.
There's also a cauliflower “Not” Chicken option for vegetarians who still want in on the heat levels. Those heat levels are themselves a point of some disagreement: the Herald-Leader describes six different spice options at Dave's restaurants, while the chain's own Kentucky restaurant page lists seven spiced-to-order levels, from Not Hot to Reaper, for its Kentucky locations. Whatever the exact count, the top end carries real stakes — Dave's requires a signed waiver before customers can order the ultra-hot Reaper.
A Chain Growing Fast Enough To Need A Scorecard
Dave's Hot Chicken first arrived in Kentucky on Aug. 5, 2022, with a Lexington location at 2630 Richmond Road. Since then the chain has expanded at a pace that's hard to overstate: it hit 500 restaurants system-wide this month, with its 500th location opening in Phoenix, Arizona, on Oct. 8, according to a prnewswire.com release. The company has added roughly 100 restaurants since crossing the 400-unit mark earlier this year, and it opened a record eight locations in a single day back in April.
That growth caught the eye of private equity. Roark Capital, which also owns Subway, Dunkin' and Arby's, purchased Dave's Hot Chicken for an estimated $1 billion in June 2025. The deal came as Dave's recorded nearly $617 million in domestic systemwide sales in 2024, a 57% jump over the prior year, as reported by restaurantbusinessonline.com. The same report notes Dave's president, Jim Bitticks, expects systemwide sales to top $1.2 billion this year, with the brand eyeing further growth in Europe, Asia, and nontraditional domestic spots like airports and college campuses.
The brand's origin story carries its own small discrepancy. Dave's Hot Chicken is based in California, and most accounts trace it to 2017, when it started as a pop-up with portable fryers and folding tables in an East Hollywood parking lot. The Herald-Leader and a prnewswire.com release both describe the founding group as three friends, while restaurantbusinessonline.com reports it was four friends, including brothers Tommy and Gary Rubenyan, who pooled $900 in savings to get started. Either way, the chain has since been named America's fastest-growing restaurant chain by Technomic, with more than 700 locations in its development pipeline as of a state-journal.com report, and has expanded internationally into Canada, the Middle East and Europe.
More Coming To The Paddocks
The Paddocks of Frankfort development already houses a lineup that includes BJ's Wholesale Club, Wawa, Texas Roadhouse, McAlister's Deli, Dave's Hot Chicken, Swig Drinks, Zaxby's and Long John Silver's. Developers have also signed a lease with Zaxby's to add a second location at the site, according to the same state-journal.com report. With Corley still chasing his goal of 10 Dave's Hot Chicken restaurants between Lexington and Louisville, Frankfort likely won't be the last Kentucky town to feel the heat.
