This Rapidly Growing Fast Food Chicken Chain Never Uses Frozen Meat

Using frozen meat is a tactic that commercial eateries employ to extend the shelf life of their dishes, cut costs, and minimize prep work. This trick guarantees uniformity and streamlines the cooking process too. However, cooking meat and poultry from fresh results in a juicier finish and an elevated texture, which many diners rightly appreciate. While big hitters like McDonald's and Burger King are just a couple of the popular restaurants that use frozen meat, there's one rapidly-growing fast food chain that never does: Raising Cane's.

The third-largest chicken chain in the U.S., Raising Cane's has over 900 restaurants and made over $5 billion in system sales in 2024 alone, showcasing the customer appetite for the restaurant's freshly made chicken fingers and its distinctively tangy Cane sauce (a top-secret signature recipe). The eatery's website states, "Three words: No heat lamps. Every meal is cooked to order, because when it comes to fresh, delicious food, we never compromise." Seeing as the restaurant's entire business model is based on serving only chicken fingers (along with immutable sides like crinkle cut fries, coleslaw, and Texas toast), it makes perfect sense that the eatery uses fresh poultry. The fresh chicken is then marinated for 24 hours before it's hand-battered and cooked to order. As the chicken is fresh, the size of the tenders can vary.

Raising Cane's opened its first store in 1996 on the campus of Louisiana State University. While there were 500 restaurants in 2000, the chain opened another 400 in the span of five years, signaling its rapid growth. This boom matches the rise in consumer chicken consumption, which reached just over 104 pounds per capita in 2025. Along with Raising Cane's commitment to using fresh chicken, the success of the restaurant can also be attributed to the way it stays true to its USP and respects its steadfast menu. "We are the chicken finger meal experts," the co-CEO of Raising Cane's, AJ Kumaran, told CNBC last year, explaining that "we don't think anybody can do it better than us at the scale that we do." Kumaran also highlighted that "when our customers pull into the drive-thru or walk through the doors, they immediately know what to expect."

Some of the other fast food chains that never use frozen meat include Five Guys and Shake Shack (which also uses eggs sourced from cage-free hens). That said, if you're looking for chicken in particular versus beef patties, Chester's also uses fresh poultry to prepare its bone-in fried chicken and tenders.