The buzz around Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers is building.

The first Raising Cane’s restaurant in the central San Joaquin Valley opened in Hanford Wednesday and several more on the way for Fresno, Clovis and surrounding areas.

Plenty of Fresnans are eager to see this new-to-us restaurant open. But since this restaurant chain is new to the area, you may be wondering, what is a Raising Cane’s?

Here’s what you need to know.

Even though the restaurant is highly anticipated, it may be unfamiliar to many people since it only has the new location in the central San Joaquin Valley. The next closest are the four in Bakersfield, with a slew of restaurants in southern California.

The Baton Rouge-based restaurant has about 500 locations nationwide, with drive-thrus that are thriving during the coronavirus pandemic.

The menu

The restaurant specializes in one type of food: 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. Or, you can get three chicken fingers in sandwich form.

Raising Cane is the name of the founder’s dog — a friendly yellow lab featured in the restaurant’s marketing.

The Hanford location has a double drive-thru and future locations may too.

If, like many Fresnans, another drive-thru inspires an emotional reaction (check out the frustrations over drive-thrus in this story) here’s what the company’s property development manager, Adam Caracci, had to say about the drive-thru during a Clovis City Council meeting last year.

The Clovis location would be about 3,300 square feet, less than half the size of the current Pier 1 building. 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 at least 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.

Where is it going?

Raising Cane’s is building 10 new restaurants in central and northern California.

In addition to the Hanford location, Fresno is also getting at least two restaurants.

One will be built on north Blackstone Avenue, on the site of the former Logan’s Roadhouse, which has been torn down.

Another is slated to open in southeast Fresno, in the Kings Canyon Pavilion shopping center at East Kings Canyon Road and South Willow Avenue.

The Raising Cane’s on the site of the former Pier 1 on Shaw Avenue in Clovis is open.

More locations are open in Tulare, Hanford, and Visalia.

This story was originally published July 8, 2021 at 9:32 AM.

Bethany Clough

The Fresno Bee

(559) 441-6431

Bethany Clough covers restaurants and retail for The Fresno Bee. A reporter for more than 20 years, she now works to answer readers’ questions about business openings, closings and other business news. She has a degree in journalism from Syracuse University and her last name is pronounced Cluff.