Raising Cane's: Todd Graves

How I Built This with Guy Raz

Guy Raz | Wondery

Business

4.8 • 31.1K Ratings

🗓️ 25 April 2022

⏱️ 86 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

By his early 20s, Todd Graves knew exactly what he wanted to do—open a restaurant near Louisiana State University that would make four things better than anyone else: chicken fingers, crinkle-cut fries, Texas toast, and coleslaw. After he and his partner Craig Silvey got rejected from every bank in Baton Rouge, Todd set out to fund his dream by working two treacherous jobs; first at an oil refinery and then on an Alaskan fishing boat. With roughly $150,000, he remodeled an old bike shop and opened his first restaurant in 1996. As word spread, Todd began building more restaurants, fueling the expansion on a rickety system of loans, and dreaming of making Cane’s as ubiquitous as McDonald's. Over the years, he has retained ownership of the business and watched it grow to over 600 stores, with 3 billion dollars in sales projected this year.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, Prime members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music.
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0:09.0	When you leave home, can you ever really go back?
0:12.0	Made a version!
0:13.0	Soccer legend Leo Messi and I both left Argentina as kids.
0:17.0	You know you're that piece of a puzzle that doesn't fit anywhere.
0:20.0	To so many immigrants, football is a way to reconnect.
0:23.0	Listen to the last cop in the embedded podcast feed
0:26.0	to hear the latest collaboration from MPR and Fududo Studios.
0:31.0	You know back then we thought you could actually, this is being naive, you could actually go to a bank, bring a business plan and they lend you money.
0:38.0	Here's my plan, I need a $100,000.
0:42.0	Yeah, and I thought they would give it to you.
0:44.0	In this great plan, this is a great idea.
0:47.0	And so did you do that?
0:48.0	Yeah, yeah, yeah, like we bought a couple of cheap suits and went to office depot
0:54.0	and bought boxy briefcases with the brass combination locks.
0:57.0	You remember those?
0:58.0	Yep, yep.
0:59.0	We went and we went and saw every bank end down.
1:01.0	I had a briefcase, Craig had a briefcase and we would put it on their desk, sitting across from in our chairs and we would open the brass combination lock.
1:11.0	Like somebody was going to steal our chicken finger business plan.
1:14.0	Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists and the stories behind the movements they built.
	...

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