Popeyes U.S. comps -5.2% Q2’26Wingstop domestic SSS -7.5% Q2’26KFC U.S. units 3,523 YE’25Dave’s unit growth +52.3% FY’25Chick-fil-A AUV $9.16MCane’s systemwide $5.48B FY’25Franchisee QSR cap 6.85%Corporate QSR cap 5.85%Category growth +5.3% ’25Wings wholesale $0.98/lb YE’25
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Home / Brands / Chicken Salad Chick
Brand profile

Chicken Salad Chick

Growingfast casualregionalfranchisedgrowing

Predominantly franchised; record franchise-agreement signing pace.

CSW Score

Methodology →
46
Rank #10 of 15 rated brands
3 of 5 components available
Unit EconomicsFY2024
43
ExpansionMay 2025
44
Real Estate StrengthMay 2025
56

Unit Economics has not been republished since FY2024. Real Estate Strength has not been republished since May 2025. It keeps its published value here — CSW does not roll a figure forward — and the rankings page lists every overdue input.

3001
U.S. units
May 2025 · 300th location; unit count +13% YoY
$394.2M2
Systemwide sales
FY2024 · Franchise Times reported $398M system sales for 2024
$1.48M2
Average unit volume
FY2024 · Franchise-store AUV, +~$75K vs 2023 (~5% same-store gain); record system AUV ~$1.5M
2883
Prior-year units
YE2024
Headquarters
Atlanta, GA
Founded
2008
Parent / ownership
Chicken Salad Chick (private — Brentwood Associates)
Structure
Private equity owned
CSW Analysis

Chicken Salad Chick is the only brand in this database that isn't really in the chicken sandwich war — it is a lunch-daypart, dine-in, non-fried concept with a $1.48M AUV and almost no drive-thru dependency. That makes it a poor comp for the rest of the category and an excellent one for anyone underwriting inline retail: the brand adds units at 13% a year without competing for the pads that Cane's, Chick-fil-A and Dave's are bidding up.

Real estate profile

Cap rate
Franchisee credit, inline and endcap product; prices wide of freestanding drive-thru chicken4

Predominantly lunch-daypart, inline retail sites with a small footprint and no fryer line — a fundamentally different real estate profile from the rest of this database, and one that competes for space with fast-casual rather than QSR pads.

Unit movement

DateTypeDetail
2025-05OpeningUnited States — 300th location; unit count up 13% year over year.1

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Sources

Every figure on this page is attributed. CSW does not publish estimates as facts — where a number is unavailable it is shown as “—”, and where a figure is derived arithmetically from two published figures it is marked as derived.

  1. [1] Restaurant Dive — Chicken Salad Chick hits 300 restaurants (2025-05)
  2. [2] QSR Magazine — Chicken Salad Chick Finds Record Growth in a Category of One (2026)
  3. [3] Franchise Times — Demand for Chicken Continues, Top 400 Data Shows (2025)
  4. [4] The Boulder Group — Single Tenant Net Lease Report — Q2 2026 (2026-07)