Franchise Team of Eight Cousins Bringing 15 Layne’s Chicken Fingers Restaurants to Austin

A franchisee team of eight cousins, all members of the Khan family, signed an agreement to open 15 Layne’s Chicken Fingers* locations in Austin, Texas, over the next nine years. The cousins come from a range of professional backgrounds — from accounting to engineering — but all have shared the dream of opening their own business for years. The team found the Soon-to-be Famous™ chicken franchise to be the perfect fit for the legacy they wanted to build, especially with most of the cousins having nostalgic memories of the brand from their time at Texas A&M University. 

Growing up in Texas, particularly College Station, they recognized Layne’s potential to expand significantly, foreseeing it as a widely accessible chain with hundreds of locations. Additionally, their experience with Layne’s revealed a strong family-oriented culture, which resonated with their own family background in business. This shared ethos and the prospect of being involved in decision-making solidified their confidence in choosing Layne’s as their franchise venture.

1851 Franchise spoke to Shahroz, Rohail and Umair of the Khan family to learn about the team’s franchising journey and plans for the future.

FEATURE QUESTIONS

1851 Franchise: Frame your personal story for us. What did you do before franchising, and how did you decide franchising made sense for you?

Shahroz: Our team consists of eight cousins. We're all working together. We’ve always wanted to be entrepreneurs, but we come from a wide range of backgrounds. Some are CPAs, some of us are engineers. There's some of us that are MBAs on top of that. But all of us have that same initiative that we want to be business owners one day and we want to help our communities, help our families, and grow over time and establish the American Dream.

Last year, we had been looking for business opportunities. We felt like we were at the place in life where we needed to be to establish ourselves and go that next step with our professional careers. We started our search with different franchises, and the one that clicked for us most was Layne’s. Their corporate team, their structure, the establishment, the organization they had and the timing was just right. Since most of us went to Texas A&M, we actually used to go to Layne’s to eat.

So once we found out that Layne’s was offering franchise opportunities and were a fully halal business, we jumped on it and the first conversation went really well. We got to meet their executive team, went out to Dallas, gave a board presentation with them as a team and told them why we believe we'd be fit for this infrastructure in the Austin market. And from that, everything lined up really well. And we're here today and we have the Austin territory from UT to Baylor University. So we're truly excited about the opportunity and look forward to expanding, being part of that community and providing more options for students in the Greater Austin and Waco area. 

1851: What was your perception of franchising prior to becoming a franchisee, and what do you want people to know about franchising now that you are in it?

Shahroz: I do have some past restaurant experience, but that wasn't a franchise, I was running my own. But I had a negative perception of joining a franchise due to how I thought the franchisors were always looking out for themselves and not really focusing on the franchisees. However,  it was a complete 180-degree switch when I met the Layne’s team and saw how they give back to their franchisees and what their plans are for expansion.  They actually work with you with their goals. When we met them for the first time, they asked about our goals. What are the Khan family's goals? We told them we want to build an empire together and grow together. We have a team, we just need the right opportunity. And we need the right franchisor to work with us and do that. 

The culture is so open that we have had brainstorming meetings which I've been taking part in during the past two months since I've joined. Not a lot of franchisors do that and care about the input of their franchisees. They talked about how we can do better as a business. What can we do to improve? What is our competition doing? I think we're in the right time at the right moment of this franchise because they're expanding so quickly with the right calculated steps. Being in that foundational stage of this franchise is allowing us to contribute and personalize it to the company's goals and success. Furthermore, allowing us to grow together. 

1851: What made you pick this brand? What excites you most about this company?

Rohail: We had a sit-down with a close friend as we looked at different restaurant franchises to invest in. One of the things that really caught our attention was when she said, “Imagine if Chick-fil-A was at 13 locations. Would you invest in it?” And that really opened our perspective. A lot of other brands are already saturated and all over the place. We want something that's going to grow. We grew up in Texas in College Station, so we saw Layne’s potential to hit the 300-, 400-, or 500-unit mark. We believe you will see a Layne’s every few miles one day.  

Second of all, when we spoke to Layne’s, they treated us like family. We are a group of family members — our dads have also done family businesses together. We’re all a really tight knit group, so when we came into Layne’s and saw how family-oriented it was, we knew it would work with us. They know family values; they know where they want to go. They're going to involve us in a lot of decisions and help us every step of the way as they have had so far. 

1851: What do you hope to achieve with your business? What are your plans for growth? 

Shahroz: Our goal is to hit the ground running. Since we've talked to the team in November, we've kept our foot on the gas. We're already working on year-two and year-three location deals with commercial real estate LL’s while we are working on the first location deal; we're thinking long-term to be successful and having internal strategy meetings to plan for our future success.  And another thing on top of that is we're working very closely with our franchise team because they have an open communication policy — which is great. This has allowed us to use their experience and their corporate strategy structure, and mindset and make sure it aligns with ours because they have more experience in this business. But we have to understand how we can grow in a way that allows us to continuously keep the same quality, while reaching all our metrics and goals. We want to be very strategic; we want to place those locations to make sure we hit the most saturated markets and ensure we are doing what’s best for the community.

Furthermore, we want to focus on brand awareness. We want to focus on making sure we can go above and beyond to provide for our customers. We're a very customer-service-oriented family with our past business experience and our current corporate roles, so we'd like to focus on that aspect. How can we be different? What is our competitive advantage? And I would say a competitive advantage lies in that customer service aspect because we do provide better food than our competitors— no bias there. But at the end of day, what matters most is the customer and that's where we're gonna focus on to ensure we establish a fan base.

Futhermore, I'm not going to only focus on my stores in Austin. I'm going to focus on how I can make Houston better. How can I help all Layne’s locations? What can I do to help our future stores across the country do well? How can we make sure that we can abide by the demand we're going to have for the next two years? That's kind of our focus — not work just for ourselves,  but work for the whole company to ensure we continue to grow together.

Rohail: I also wanted to add in something about growth. We do have a big team and one of the reasons why we have a big team is so we can grow. The dream one day is to take it internationally. We don't want to just stay in Texas. We want to go international one day as well if possible. We want to hit the Canadian market, the Saudi market, the Dubai market. I truly think that our team has the expertise and the operational success to hit those markets. That’s our vision. We want to take Layne’s international with due time and allow us to stretch to all corners of the world if allowed by Corporate. 

Umair: Our biggest goal is to help the community and help the people out. We're not very focused on our numbers. We're not focused on how much we're going to make, or how fast we're going to make it. We're worried about helping our community and we're more worried about getting our 15 locations up, versus the numbers. We're just trying to help as many people as possible as we can. I think that our number one goal is to help people out and make a positive impact overall.

1851: What is the one thing about your story you want us to know?

Rohail: Our parents immigrated to America around 30 years ago. They started off with nothing. I know that sounds cliche — that's everybody's story. But our dads worked together and they had those family values instilled into them and said, “If we stick together as a family and don't let money come in between us, we can grow into something big.” The five brothers worked together and they built a legacy for us to continue on. They gave us the ability to bring our family together. We want to take this generationally for our kids or grandkids. We truly think Layne’s is a company that we can continue our legacy with for the next 100 years.

Shahroz: Our parents have done so much for us and sacrificed so much. They had great lives overseas and they were looking at the future. Our focus is how we can pay it forward looking at the future generations ahead. How do we take care of everyone who sacrificed for us? We don't say this is just our cousins’ business, we say this is our family's business. We're not just focusing on our Austin market. We're going to affect all our franchisees throughout the United States, and hopefully take Layne’s international one day. Our morals and our values are very important to us. We want to focus on how we can help out the community we're in and how we can help out the people we're going to be working with. Everyone has complications or stories, so how can we make a positive impact on their lives?

1851: What advice do you have for other people thinking about becoming a franchise owner?

Shahroz: My advice to future franchisees would be to never give up on your vision. Make sure that you believe in yourself and your team. And most importantly, never never stop trying to make your dreams come true. Because it's been our dream for years, and we're here today because we never stop. We never stop trying and never loose faith in God. 

ABOUT LAYNE'S CHICKEN FINGERS

Founded in 1994 in College Station, the original location became a Texas A&M legend known for its small-town charm, friendly service, iconic chicken fingers and secret sauce. While opening corporate locations across the Dallas-Fort Worth area, the leadership team focused on fine tuning its operations and starting to franchise.  

Franchise opportunities range from $545,000 to $1,190,000 with different buildout options available. Learn more about franchising here.