If you have yet to hear about Daddy’s Chicken Shack, get ready to touch base with one of the fastest-growing, best reviewed, tech-forward buttermilk fried chicken franchises. This week, the fast casual eatery announced its third Colorado regional development agreement, signing on Lori and Kerry Dunn to bring 10 locations to the Denver area in the next five years. The couple aims to open their first location in Colorado Springs in Q4, 2023. It was two things that brought the experienced real estate investors to franchise with Daddy’s
“First, it was Dave Liniger’s involvement. He has decades of franchising investment,” Lori told What Now Denver. “His experience in the franchising lane is second to no one.”
Per Daddy’s press, “Dave Liniger’s investment portfolio is as varied as they come.”
“I’ve owned NASCAR race tracks, NASCAR race teams, we’ve bred over 3,000 Arabian horses … we’ve been in dozens of ventures,” Liniger said in the presser.
The co-founder of global real estate franchise Re/Max, Liniger, like the Dunns, had never strayed into the restaurant business, but a meal at the original Daddy’s Chicken Shack in Pasadena, California flipped that perspective on its head when Liniger “sort of fell in love with them.”
Chef Pace Webb and her husband, Chris Georgalas, founded Daddy’s in 2018, catering Pasadena events and selling out of a “small shop that hit it out of the park during the pandemic.”
“This was the first clue they had something special,” Lori said.
The COVID pandemic shaped entrepreneurial ambitions for the shop, forcing a tech-forward philosophy from the start. According to the recent press release, founders designed the restaurant for off-premise dining, facilitating online ordering via “app engagement” and online ordering. On the ground, in-store web-enabled tech organized orders, and “exclusive” pick-up areas and third-party delivery partnerships helped to align to social distancing. Georgalas helped to install a “dynamic backend technology suite” that crunches data in real time to create more efficient service. These innovations helped to boost sales by more than 200% over pandemic times. While Daddy’s operations provide the infrastructure, it’s the food that’s the clincher.
“The food quality is off the charts,” Kerry Dunn said. “I can’t wait to have another chicken sandwich at Daddy’s. That was the best chicken sandwich I’ve ever had when we tried the food Houston’s Discovery Day. That kind of quality and that kind of flavor at that price? There is no other competition.”
The franchise’s combination of visionary leadership, forward-thinking tech, and unbeatable fast eats has led to such explosive growth for Daddy’s that the brand landed on the cover of QSR Magazine’s 40/40 list, “outlining the hottest and fastest-growing franchise concepts in the industry.”
Overseeing their Daddy’s restaurants from Castle Rock, the Dunns plan to focus on the Colorado Springs area for their stores. The pair is currently eyeing the burgeoning north side of the city for its first Daddy’s Chicken Shack. Keep an eye out for where the additional Denver-area Daddy’s will be landing.
