Before opening his first chicken finger restaurant, Raising Cane’s founder Todd Graves worked as a boilermaker in an oil refinery and a commercial fisher in Alaska in order to raise the money he needed to build his dream restaurant from the ground up. The first Raising Cane’s opened in 1996 at LSU, in an old building that Graves gutted and renovated to make way for what would soon become a fried chicken empire.
Now, Raising Cane’s has 523 franchised locations throughout the country, only five of which are in Arizona. But all of that is about to change. The newest AZ Raising Cane’s location will be opening in 2022, in Mesa’s brand-spanking-new Gallery Park on South Power Road by the Santan Freeway.
Similar to the restaurant’s very first location, the new spot will also be built from the ground up, alongside a number of other restaurants and retail outlets in Gallery Park, which bills itself as an “urban village” focused on artistic expression and a family-friendly experience. Long story short, it’s a sparkly new shopping center with an artistic edge. And really, there’s nothing like ending a long day of shopping with a box of chicken fingers and some crinkle fries (second only to Chick-fil-A’s waffle fries, which is just across the street, if you’re that desperate).
