Hot Birds, the Nashville-style hot chicken concept that built a following inside Marble City Market, is spreading its wings into Cedar Bluff. The restaurant plans to open its first standalone location at 460 N. Cedar Bluff Road, in a strip mall near Potchke Bagel.
From Food Hall Stall to Storefront
According to the Knoxville News Sentinel, Hot Birds is planning a Cedar Bluff location.
The Cedar Bluff storefront marks a new chapter for a business that started as a stall inside Marble City Market in downtown Knoxville. Hot Birds describes itself on its website as bringing “bold new creativity to Nashville-style Hot Chicken” from its downtown base, according to gethotbirds.com, which lists the business's current address as 333 W Depot Ave., Suite 110, in Knoxville.
Scratch-Made Chicken and Scorpion-Level Heat
Hot Birds launched inside Marble City Market in June 2024 after moving its operation from Real Good Kitchen, according to marblecitymarket.com, which says the shift let the brand reach more customers with indoor dining. The founders, lifelong friends Amin Islam and Ashraf Ali, brought backgrounds in professional cooking and high-end catering to the concept, according to the restaurant's own account on its website's story page. That same page states the business now sells more than 5,000 sandwiches a month, a figure that reflects the restaurant's own claims about its growth.
Marble City Market's vendor profile says everything from the tenders to the coleslaw and comeback sauce is made from scratch in-house, and that the chicken itself goes through a 24-hour brine before cooking, a process also described on the gethotbirds.com story page. The business describes its chicken as 100% Zabiha Halal and never frozen. On the heat front, Hot Birds says its spice levels climb all the way to “scorpion,” which it describes as just under 1 million Scoville units, per the Marble City Market listing. Hot Birds' offerings include tenders, coleslaw, comeback sauce and wings.
Part of a Broader Hot Chicken Boom
Hot Birds isn't the only Nashville-style hot chicken brand making moves in the Knoxville area. Hattie B's Hot Chicken recently opened its first Knoxville location on Cumberland Avenue, marking the chain's 20th location overall, according to WBIR. That outlet reports the chain chose Cumberland Avenue for its proximity to the University of Tennessee, the surrounding residential population and ongoing development along the corridor, and that Hattie B's plans further Tennessee expansion with locations coming in Memphis and Chattanooga.
WBIR's reporting frames Hattie B's downtown debut as another sign of a changing business landscape on Cumberland Avenue, where longtime local businesses face rising costs even as established restaurant brands move in. One business owner on the strip told the station that property taxes have tripled, which the owner said makes it harder for local businesses to sustain themselves. Hot Birds' own expansion, by contrast, is headed to Cedar Bluff, a commercial corridor near North Cedar Bluff Plaza, which sits just off I-40, according to a listing from Fiser.
