NBA Hall-of-Famer Shaquille O’Neal is sending his Big Chicken franchise to South Florida, with a blitz of fast-casual eating places set to open throughout the tricounty in 2022 and 2023.
All advised, the fried-chicken franchise based by the basketball icon in 2018 inked a deal for 45 franchises in Florida, with Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach slated to open first. New storefront leases are “days away” from being signed with future outposts destined for Miami, Tampa, Orlando and Fort Myers. No addresses have been introduced but.
An ode to the favourite flavors of the previous Miami Heat participant’s childhood — mac and cheese and rooster wings — Big Chicken slings fried-chicken sandwiches with many toppings. There’s the Big & Sloppy with mac and cheese, fried onions; the Big Aristotle (muenster cheese, fried onions, Memphis-style barbecue sauce); and the Shaq Attack (pepper jack, jalapeño slaw, spicy chipotle barbecue sauce).
The menu additionally options tenders, sliders and milkshakes. Sides embrace Cheez-It-crusted mac-n’-cheese, jalapeño slaw and candy potato French fries.
Fred Burgess, whose Davie-based hospitality group DMD Ventures partnered with O’Neal on the franchises, tells the South Florida Sun Sentinel that he felt an immediate kinship with the NBA legend, particularly after assembly him in individual final week at a Las Vegas restaurant.
Sitting in a restaurant sales space throughout from Shaq may be intimidating — the expertise, for Burgess, not in contrast to rubbing shoulders with an enormous. When the assembly completed, O’Neal and Burgess stood up and shook arms, and “my hand felt like a little ping-pong ball in his hand,” he remembers.
“This isn’t the usual case where a celebrity endorses a chicken place. This is actually a brand he created by himself and is inspired by him,” Burgess says. “He found these veteran partners and wants to scale up fast.”
O’Neal’s enterprise acumen struck him as spectacular, says Burgess, whose DMD Ventures additionally operates native Papa Johns franchises and several other South Florida areas of Twin Peaks, a sports activities “breastaurant.”
Ultimately, it was Shaq’s ego that bought Burgess and his DMD Ventures associate, Jack Flechner. Calling his eating places “Chicken Shaq” — or another on-the-nose, celebrity-driven identify — would have been cringeworthy, he says, and Burgess revered O’Neal extra for sidestepping the apparent.
“He could have called this Shaq’s Big Chicken,” Burgess says. “But the brand isn’t focused on him. When you enter a store, you’re not surrounded by Shaq. They stayed away from that. It’s incredible to keep your ego out of it.”
Founded in Las Vegas, Big Chicken at the moment has 200 new franchises within the pipeline, with a handful already open in two states, inside sports activities arenas and even aboard Carnival Cruise ships.
Big Chicken plans to open areas in Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach in late 2022 and early 2023. Go to BigChicken.com.
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Source: www.bostonherald.com