Named last year as America’s fastest growing restaurant chain, Dave’s Hot Chicken opens a new location in Cherry Hill NJ on April 5th.
Currently the closest location to us is in Northeast Philadelphia and I stopped there today to see what Dave’s was all about, so I could share the experience with readers.
Dave’s Hot Chicken is a fast growing, fast food restaurant with a simple menu focused on Nashville Hot Chicken… available as tenders or slider sandwiches.
Each piece of Dave’s boneless chicken is brined for hours before it is dropped into a fryer. For maximum flavor, Dave’s special spices are cooked into the skin and breast instead of just being poured on to the cooked chicken.
The location for the upcoming Cherry Hill Dave’s Hot Chicken is at the Ellisburg Shopping Center (Whole Foods), in a freestanding building situated along King’s highway. The building was previously a Burger-Fi restaurant.
42Freeway first wrote about the plans for Cherry Hill location back in December when “Coming Soon” signage first appeared on the building… although news had actually gotten out back in September.
Over the last few weeks the building remodeling has really hit full steam, with the exterior signage already in place.
In my visit today construction workers were buzzing around the Cherry Hill location moving materials in and out, as well as a few workers on the side patio area… from what I could see the building looked far along in the construction effort but I was not able to see inside.
Dave’s Hot Chicken – The Story
It’s clear that chicken sandwiches and chicken restaurants are a hot thing in America the last few years, and our South Jersey area is definitely seeing an influx of new sandwiches and new restaurants!
The founders of Dave’s Hot chicken seemed to time things perfectly with their 2017 start, when four friends put in $900 total to buy a portable fryer and initial supplies, and set up in an East Hollywood California parking lot!
With such a small space to start with, they kept to a small menu… which still carries through today even after they’ve opened 100 brick-and-mortar restaurants.
Keeping things simple allowed Dave’s to focus on high quality and a delicious taste. They use the finest chicken ingredients, and each piece is topped with Dave’s signature mix of spices… 8 levels of heat which range from no spice to Reaper.
Utilizing Instagram as a free marketing tool, the parking lot chicken restaurant quickly gained a large following leading to long lines and the opening of their first actual restaurant. Soon Dave’s Hot Chicken attracted the attention of industry experts and even celebrity investors such as Drake.
Today they have over 100 locations and over 700 additional locations signed in the pipeline!
Dave’s Hot Chicken – The Experience
Wanting to know what Dave’s Hot Chicken was all about I took a ride today up to Northeast Philadelphia to visit an open location there.
While there are core design elements to all of the locations, each Dave’s restaurant is a unique piece of art, as they hire local graffiti artists to decorate the interior walls.
It gives the restaurants an urban city vibe which connects back to their roots in California.
The menu today is still very simple and probably is not much different than when they first started in in 2017!
They list four main combo choices which are really just variations of two different items… Tenders or Sliders. And the slider sandwiches appear to be the tenders on a bun, and added into the sandwich are kale slaw, pickles and Dave’s Sauce!
I went with the Number 4 combo which is 1 slider with fries. I also added cheese.
While it’s called a slider (which would make you think it’s smaller sized) I would say it’s about the size of a standard Chick-fil-A sandwich.
I went with a mild sauce, but even that still gave a deep red tone to the chicken tender… and was just enough spicy heat. Dave’s delivered the flavorful heat that I prefer!
The kale slaw added a cool freshness to the sandwich, and the Dave’s Sauce added a little extra flavor.
I thought the sandwich was very tasty and fresh… and I liked the addition of the additional flavors (kale slaw) which made the bite more interesting and delicious.
Links and Location
Dave’s Hot Chicken – Coming Soon
Ellisburg Shopping Center
22 Route 70
Cherry Hill, NJ 08034