Mixed corporate and franchise; renewed franchise recruiting drive into the Midwest and Northeast.
Unit Economics has not been republished since YE2024. System Momentum has not been republished since FY2024. It keeps its published value here — CSW does not roll a figure forward — and the rankings page lists every overdue input.
Zaxby's spent the last several years fixing operations rather than chasing unit count, and the payoff is a $2.71M AUV that sits second only to Chick-fil-A and Cane's among franchised chicken chains. Crossing 1,000 units and then walking into the Bronx and the Upper East Side is a genuine test: Zaxby's has never had to make a 2,800 SF, seat-constrained, no-drive-thru box work at Southeast economics. If it does, the brand's franchise recruiting pitch changes completely, because the addressable market stops being the Southeast and starts being every dense metro where Cane's and Wingstop already print volume.
Cap rate
Marketed franchisee product in the high-6% to mid-7% range — a Midwest City, OK asset was offered at a 7.42% cap ($2.11M)34
Zaxby's is a larger box than most of the category — historically 3,500+ SF with dine-in — which is why the brand is now leaning on smaller and non-traditional formats to enter dense Northeast markets. The Upper East Side unit is roughly 2,800 SF with 16 seats and kiosks.5
| Date | Location | Price | Cap | Terms |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | Midwest City, OK3 | $2.11M | 7.42% | — |
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| Announced | Market | Commitment | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | National (Midwest / Northeast focus)6 | 60+ openings in 2026 | 2026; goal of 100 per year |
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| Date | Type | Detail |
|---|---|---|
| 2026-07 | Opening | Upper East Side, Manhattan, NY — 1267 First Avenue; 2,800+ SF with 16 dine-in seats and self-order kiosks.5 |
| 2026-06-29 | Opening | Bronx, NY — First Zaxby's restaurant in New York City; 24th state for the brand.6 |
| 2025-12 | Opening | Magnolia, NJ — First New Jersey location and the brand's Northeast debut.6 |
| 2026-02 | Opening | National — Brand surpassed 1,000 locations.1 |
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What it means for the Chicken Wars: A Southeast chicken brand with a 3,500 SF suburban dine-in DNA is now operating in the Bronx, with a 2,800 SF, 16-seat Upper East Side unit behind it. If the small-format Northeast box clears anywhere near the $2.71M system AUV, Zaxby's franchise recruiting stops being a regional pitch.
What it means for the Chicken Wars: From 969 units at the end of 2024 to more than 1,000, with a projected $2.8B in system sales and a $2.71M AUV — the third-highest unit volume in the category behind Chick-fil-A and Cane's. Zaxby's has quietly become the strongest franchised chicken investment outside the top two.
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.