This national chicken restaurant wants to come to the Fresno area. Here’s what we know
Update: The Clovis City Council gave its unanimous approval Monday, Oct. 19 for Raising Cane’s to move ahead with the drive-thru it wants to build.
Popular national chain Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers wants to open a restaurant in Clovis.
If all goes as planned, the company would be building a new restaurant with a drive-thru on the site of the now-closed Pier 1 store at the northwest corner of a Shaw and Cole avenues. That’s next to Cool Hand Luke’s Steakhouse and across the street from Sierra Vista Mall.
The Pier 1 store closed in recent weeks and all the locations in the bankrupt chain are closing. Raising Cane’s would knock down the building and construct a new building on the site.
Raising Cane’s is a quick-service restaurant with about 500 locations nationwide that specialize in just one thing: chicken fingers.
You can get meals that come with two, three, four or six chicken fingers. All come with french fries, Texas toast and coleslaw.
You can also get three chicken fingers in sandwich form, but chicken fingers are the only entree on the menu.
Raising Cane is the name of the founder’s dog — a friendly yellow lab featured in the restaurant’s marketing.
The Baton Rouge-based company has filed a permit application for a drive-thru with the city of Clovis. Drive-thrus are technically prohibited on that stretch of Shaw Avenue, so the restaurant must apply for special permission. Several other restaurants have received such permission in recent years.
The planning commission recommended approval last week and the City Council will have the final say at its Oct. 19 meeting, said City of Clovis senior planner Ricky Caperton.
“This is a relatively straightforward project,” he said. “I haven’t received any opposition at all from anybody.”
More locations?
Rumors about the chain’s interest in the Fresno area have been swirling for months.
The company bought property in Hanford (at the southwest corner of 12th and Lacey avenues), and advertised a job listing for an area director last winter. But it has declined to speak to The Bee about its plans for the area.
Raising Cane’s is expanding into California, and possibly planning two more locations in the area, said the company’s property development manager, Adam Caracci, during his presentation during the Sept. 24 Clovis planning commission meeting.
It has about two dozen restaurants in the Los Angeles area and is moving north, he said. Two locations opened recently in Bakersfield.
Clovis restaurant
If approved by the City Council, the Clovis location would be about 3,300 square feet, less than half the size of the current Pier 1 building, Caperton noted.
The drive-thru would take up much of the rest of the property. It would feature two lanes with room for 20 cars – more than the city requires – that funnel into one lane.
During busy lunch and dinner times, workers walk out to cars, using tablets for customers to order and pay for food. Workers then run the food to the cars, meaning some cars won’t go past a pick-up window at all, Caracci said.
“During peak (times), the menu board and the pay window and the pick-up window are obsolete,” he said.
The drive-thrus’ average time for serving customers, from ordering to bringing them food, is one minute and 46 seconds, he said.
“We know you’re ordering chicken, so when you pull in the lot, we drop chicken in the fryer and it’s getting served by the time you get up to the window,” he said.
The restaurant would employ 100 people in full- and part-time jobs, including six to eight managers with “executive level” salaries.
Its hours will likely be from 9 a.m. to 1:30 a.m. Sundays through Thursdays, and until 3:30 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays.
This story was originally published October 1, 2020 at 4:05 PM.
