It started in an East Hollywood parking lot: one small fryer, no permits, a few heat lamps and a tent constantly battered by wind.

A trio of friends — all from L.A.’s Armenian community, and all high school dropouts — scraped together $900 in 2017 because they believed that their Nashville-style fried chicken stand was the future.

Now Dave’s Hot Chicken is worth $1 billion.

This year the modern specialist in the decades-old spicy fried chicken style that originated in Nashville became one of L.A.’s most astounding small-business success stories. The chain currently operates about 320 storefronts, with 800 more planned. Dave’s Hot Chicken has opened as many as five new locations in a day. (“Oh, we’ve done that multiple times,” co-founder Arman Oganesyan said casually.)

The spiced, craggly, neon-red chicken tenders and sandwiches can now be found in London and Dubai just as easily as in Hollywood and Ladera Heights.

And those are now valuable globetrotting chicken tenders. In June private-equity firm Roark Capital acquired the homespun chain, which began with a five-month renegade stint, valuing Dave’s at $1 billion.

“Ever since Dave’s started it changed my life, but this [deal] gives me a little bit of security,” Oganesyan said. According to Oganesyan, who declined to share the figure of his new net worth, the payout was “a lot.”

“Let’s just say it’s starting to look like a phone number,” he said of his bank account.

The 33-year-old entrepreneur, born in Armenia, moved to Los Angeles when he was 2 years old and met another Dave’s founder, Tommy Rubenyan, in kindergarten. In middle school Dave Kopushyan became another fast friend, and eventually the chef, co-founder and namesake of their company.

Until 2017 the thought of owning a restaurant empire — let alone a single restaurant — never crossed Oganesyan’s mind. But that year the aspiring actor and standup comedian noticed Nashville hot chicken starting to trend, primarily given the success of Chinatown’s Howlin’ Ray’s, a West Coast beacon of the dish.

The fried chicken is typically coated in a mixture of cayenne and paprika that singes the tongue. It was invented by Thornton Prince III, of Nashville’s Prince’s Hot Chicken. His descendant Kim Prince brought her family’s legacy to L.A. in 2017 with her Baldwin Hills-Crenshaw restaurant, Hotville Chicken, but closed it in 2022. She now serves her famous Hotville fried chicken via Dulanville Food Truck, which she runs in collaboration with restaurateur Gregory Dulan.

Prince’s sparked hot chicken restaurants throughout the country, but it reached a fever pitch in Los Angeles with Howlin’ Ray’s.

Oganesyan knew Kopushyan, a former Bouchon line cook, had the culinary skills to test the waters, but it took a little convincing to get him on board. But after a taste — and witnessing the popularity — Kopushyan had to try to create a recipe of his own.

“Arman brought me to Howlin’ Ray’s and it blew my mind,” Kopushyan previously told The Times. “We saw the lines at Howlin’ Ray’s and we knew it was going to be a good business.”

‘It’s not called Dave’s Mild Chicken’

When not working shifts at Echo Park vegetarian restaurant Elf Cafe, Kopushyan toiled in his home kitchen with spice blends for four and a half months, obsessively tinkering with breading, seasoning and frying.

The three friends ate it every day, tasting and discussing each batch in Kopushyan’s Hollywood apartment. He wanted to steer the pop-up in a cheffier direction, incorporating their own house-made bread and pickles, while Oganesyan wanted something more tailored to his own “simple palate.” Eventually they found compromise.

The recipes, however, remain secret.

They scraped together about $900: $315 Oganesyan had saved, $300 from Kopushyan’s most recent Elf Cafe paycheck, and another $300 from Rubenyan.

When the trio deemed their product ready, Rubenyan’s parents spotted an opportunity: Across the street from their East Hollywood flower shop sat a vacant lot. They knew the landlords, who gave the trio their blessing to use the space. The plan was simple: Pop up for roughly a year, then spring for a food truck and slowly grow the operation into a bricks-and-mortar.

Things moved at a much faster pace than any of them imagined.

Dave’s Hot Chicken debuted in May 2017 running Monday to Saturday, informally, in the parking lot.

“If we got shut down, we got shut down, back to square one,” Oganesyan said of the business plan. Fortunately for them, it never happened.

As word of mouth spread curious customers lined up for meals that included two tenders with fries, slaw and slices of white bread, nearly identical to what the chain offers today. A few weeks later the team added sandwiches.

Eventually they would expand the spice-level offerings from the simple choice of mild or hot to today’s seven options ranging from no spice to reaper. “We always tell people to get hot, because it’s not called Dave’s Mild Chicken,” Oganesyan said.

The chicken — sourced from Wayne Farms — has been halal from day one, not due to religious preferences but to quality, a choice that multiple members involved said contributed to the seamless expansion into the United Arab Emirates.

The early days were “hectic,” according to its owners, who said they were “working against the elements” with far too many customers than they were prepared for.

An early article from Eater LA multiplied the lines overnight, with 60 to 90 guests waiting for at least an hour. Instagram and TikTok fueled the demand, creating more buzz and a flurry of parking-lot imitators across the city. Within a few months, the trio realized they’d need to ride the hot-chicken wave and expand earlier than planned.

Rubenyan’s brother, Gary, became a partner, allowing them to launch their first restaurant, a corner space in a strip mall on Western Avenue. They invited their friends to scrawl spray-painted phrases and sketches across the walls, an aesthetic now seen in Dave’s locations around the world.

Flying the L.A. coop

Soon after launching their first storefront, investors John Davis and Bill Phelps entered the picture.

Davis, a prolific movie and TV producer, had his hand in a number of fast-casual restaurants. He’d helped incubate and grow businesses such as Blaze Pizza and Wetzel’s Pretzels with his business partner, Phelps.

In 2018 the Dave’s founders sold half of the company to Davis and Phelps, and tapped the latter as chief executive; the company launched the second Dave’s in 2019, quickly followed by a half-dozen more. Franchises spread into San Diego and Orange County, then Canada, across the U.S. and into the United Arab Emirates and London. Lines at openings still routinely wrap around the block, eight years into business.

“I’ve been doing the restaurant industry since I was 15 years old — I’m 51 years old now, and I’ve never seen anything like Dave’s or the fandom around it,” said Jim Bitticks, Dave’s president and chief operating officer.

Bitticks joined Dave’s after the company’s fourth restaurant, and had worked with Phelps and Davis at Blaze Pizza. The companies’ franchise and expansion plans, he said, are similar: Roughly 99% of the restaurants should be franchise-owned-and-operated, with a few company-helmed restaurants to staff training teams, which then help open franchise locations around the world.

The four founders still own and operate seven locations, including the first restaurant and three others in L.A., plus three in Las Vegas. They see themselves as a kind of In-N-Out for Nashville hot chicken — but with a globe-spanning reach.

Within two years of Dave’s partnership with Phelps and Davis numerous celebrities signed on as investors, including Drake, Samuel L. Jackson and Maria Shriver.

“It was great, but I emphasized to everybody that celebrities are not going to make or break your brand,” Oganesyan said. “If your food can’t stand on its own two feet, then it doesn’t matter if the pope endorses you, nobody’s gonna care.”

‘They’re going to sell out’

Then in 2025, a breaded-and-fried bombshell: Multi-billion-dollar private equity firm Roark Capital would acquire 70% of the chain’s business, a deal valued at $1 billion.

The behemoth, Atlanta-based firm currently owns five dozen companies, nearly half of them food-based, including Subway, Arby’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, Baskin Robbins, Dunkin’ Cinnabon and Jimmy John’s.

Its courtship with Dave’s was a long one. Representatives attended the opening of the chain’s 15th storefront in 2021, and ever since, they kept in touch. In late 2024 the Dave’s founders decided to expand into even more countries and “nontraditional” spaces such as airports and food courts.

After years of interest from Roark Capital they decided, in early 2025, to agree to a deal.

Bitticks said that a stipulation of the acquisition was that all executives keep 50% of their equity, keeping them engaged in the future of Dave’s Hot Chicken.

“None of us are leaving,” he said.

“We have gotten people saying, ‘Oh, they sold, they’re going to sell out,’” Bittick said. “We’re really focused on not allowing that to happen. Even though there was a sale and some of the equity changed hands, the whole point is that Roark Capital doesn’t want to screw it up, either.”

Eventually, Oganesyan said, he might like to start a new company. For now his focus is on Dave’s and how far they can build the brand.

“I feel like the sky’s the limit right now,” he said.

Nearly everything — at least so far — has remained the same at the company. The same management team remains in place. Oganesyan will remain the branding officer, and Kopushyan the chief culinary officer.

The founders’ hope is that Roark Capital allows for an international expansion with minimal intervention in the existing chain of command. There’s also the increase in access. With a network of global food suppliers, the Dave’s team aims to secure better vendor pricing and similar scaling perks under the Roark umbrella — though the chicken’s sourcing will remain the same.

According to Dave’s owners the food will not change, and if any new items are added to the menu, they will be closely related to the original dishes. Oganesyan said all employees will be retained.

“For the most part,” Oganesyan said, “I think we’ll continue to run the company the way it is.”

After the acquisition, shareholders contributed roughly $60 million of their own profits to start a bonus pool for Dave’s employees, including some store managers whom they felt had helped the business grow over the years.

The chicken road ahead

Before Dave’s, Olivia Mendoza had never tasted Nashville-style hot chicken. The closest she’d come, she said, was Popeye’s — not very close at all. But the spicy hot chicken would change her life, turning her into a first-time business owner in less than one year with the company.

Along with Bitticks and three others, Mendoza owns and operates Dave’s locations in Ontario, Fontana and Chino Hills, and a fourth is set to debut in Claremont this month, with more planned for next year.

Could the excitement over Nashville-style hot chicken eventually fizzle out?

“Obviously, there’s always things that come and go — a trend — and they die in a few years,” Mendoza said. “But I feel like this is something that’s going to stay because it’s not just another brand. I think because of all it has behind it, and all the support that is there, that it will keep us going and growing as well.”

The company hopes to bring its neon-red chicken strips farther into the UAE, U.K. and Europe. But to Oganesyan, no matter where Dave’s opens and how far his hot chicken empire spreads, Los Angeles will always be the chain’s home base.

“We’re just so known out here,” he said. “It’s our hometown. It’s like a home court advantage out here.”