Who Owns Dave's Hot Chicken?

Dave’s Hot Chicken is majority-owned by Roark Capital, the American private equity firm behind Arby’s, Dunkin’ and Subway, which bought about 75% in a deal reported at $1bn completing in June 2025. The founders kept a collective 10%. In Britain the restaurants will be run by franchisees, not by the brand — and no Dave’s Hot Chicken company appears on the UK register. Ownership verified 6 September 2026.

Who owns the Daves Hot Chicken brand?

Dave’s Hot Chicken began in 2017 as a car park pop-up in East Hollywood, started by Arman Oganesyan and the chefs Dave Kopushyan, Tommy Rubenyan and Gary Rubenyan with a reported $900 between them. Dave Kopushyan is the Dave in the name.

The brand is now owned by Roark Capital, which acquired roughly 75% in June 2025. The founding team retains a reported 10% between them and the then chief executive Bill Phelps a reported 5%.

Searching Companies House for it returns nothing belonging to the chain — only a long list of unrelated British businesses with “hot chicken” in the name. That absence is itself the finding: the brand owner has no UK company of its own.

Parent company and ultimate owner

Roark Capital is a private American firm and is not listed, so there is no ultimate owner in the sense used elsewhere on this site — the capital comes from the funds Roark manages, and the economic interest belongs to those funds’ investors.

That is the same distinction drawn on the Asda and Morrisons pages: a private equity firm directs the business while the money behind it belongs to pension schemes, endowments and institutions.

Roark is unusual in scale within restaurant franchising, which is why the acquisition drew attention beyond the trade press.

Brand owner vs operating company

Dave’s Hot Chicken is overwhelmingly a franchise business: the great majority of its restaurants are owned and run by franchisees, not by the company.

That means the answer to “who owns Dave’s Hot Chicken” in any particular high street is almost never Roark. It is whichever operator holds the franchise for that territory — as with the Wingstop page on this site, where the British restaurants belong to a master franchisee majority-owned by a different investment firm entirely.

When UK sites open, the operating companies will appear on Companies House under the franchisee’s name, and those filings will be the place to look. Franchise agreements themselves are private contracts and are not filed anywhere public.

When the ownership changed

The chain has changed hands once, and grown at a pace that explains why.

• 2017 — founded as a pop-up in Los Angeles.
• 2019 onwards — franchising begins; early backers included the entrepreneur and investor group around Bill Phelps, a co-founder of Wetzel’s Pretzels, and the actor Samuel L. Jackson and Drake among reported individual investors.
• June 2025 — Roark Capital acquires approximately 75% at a reported $1bn valuation.
• 2025 — a reported 136 openings in the year, and the 400th restaurant opening in Abu Dhabi.

Growth from a car park to a billion-dollar valuation in eight years is the reason the ownership question is being asked at all, and the reason the answer changed so recently.

Related brands in the same group

Roark Capital’s restaurant holdings include Subway, Dunkin’, Baskin-Robbins, Arby’s, Buffalo Wild Wings, Jimmy John’s, Sonic and Cinnabon, several held through Inspire Brands.

Those brands share an owner rather than a business, and they are separately operated. Dave’s Hot Chicken is not part of Inspire Brands and is not connected to Wingstop, KFC or Popeyes — Wingstop is separately listed and Popeyes belongs to Restaurant Brands International.

Sources and verification

This page has no UK register evidence, and that is worth stating plainly: Companies House holds no company for the brand, so nothing here is register-verified.

The Roark acquisition, the approximate 75/10/5 split and the $1bn valuation come from the parties’ announcements and trade press reporting; Roark is private and does not publish holdings. The founder and investor details are from company statements and interviews. If and when UK restaurants open, the franchisee’s own filings will be checkable at Companies House — and those will show who owns the business you actually buy from, which is a different question from who owns the brand.