Most emerging restaurant concepts franchise because they have to. They need franchise fees to fund the next phase, and they need someone else’s capital to figure out what should have been tested in company-owned stores. Urban Bird Hot Chicken, the hot chicken franchise based in Texas, is taking the opposite route.
The brand is franchising after building a real corporate footprint, learning the economics the hard way, tightening costs, stress-testing delivery and dialing in what works across different sites and footprints. Today, Urban Bird has opened more than 20 corporate locations in the Lone Star State and is on pace to reach 28 by the spring of 2026.
So, how did they do it? The founders, Brandon Gawthorp and Chantel Fiaschetti, don’t pretend that they just got lucky and stumbled into success. They’ve lived in the franchisee seat for a long time.
Urban Bird didn’t start as a “we should franchise this” idea. It started as a survival move that turned into a concept with real pull. By 2017, Brandon and Chantel were already seasoned operators. They had built a growing Wingstop portfolio, but they also made a bet on an early pizza concept that went sideways fast.
“We opened this pizza concept and ended up having to close the doors in 2018,” Brandon said. “It was a larger space and the rent was about $15,000 a month. So when we closed, we weren’t going to just walk away from a lease. We were going to do it right.”
They kept paying that rent for more than a year while trying to find a tenant. At the same time, Brandon had started noticing a food trend that felt like more than a fad, but he didn’t have a plan to build a brand around it yet.
That trend came into focus during a Vegas trip. “I’ve always had a thing for chicken and waffles,” he said. “And one of the items was a limited-time hot chicken sandwich. When I bit into that thing, I was like, ‘Wow, this is amazing.’ It felt like the first time I ever tasted hot chicken.”
Back in Houston, he tried to scratch the itch like a normal person. He went looking for hot chicken. The problem was that most of what was available didn’t hit the same. That’s when the founder brain kicked in, as well as when a practical opportunity appeared: a vacancy in the same shopping center where they were trapped in that expensive pizza lease.
“I texted the landlord,” Brandon said. “I was like, ‘Hey, you should let me open up a hot chicken restaurant. Let me switch spaces.’ I thought he would just kind of laugh at me, but he sent me a text back. He’s like, ‘Let’s talk.’”
So now the big problem wasn’t real estate. It was the product. This wasn’t a copy-and-paste menu. They built the core product from scratch, under pressure, during a chaotic time in the industry.
“Developing the recipe was the hardest thing,” Brandon said. “It took 60 experiments to get the chicken to where we felt it was perfect. What I wanted was very specific. Something very light, with crispy breading and not too much sodium.”
Urban Bird opened its first location in September 2020, in the thick of COVID. While many restaurants were still takeout-only, Brandon and Chantel believed guests would still show up for a safe dine-in experience. At the same time, they designed the model for off-premises demand, knowing delivery was here to stay.
“There was a lot of grit, a lot of pain and a lot of tears during that time,” Chantel said. “We just kept pushing and pushing, taking one step in front of the other, and here we are. That is why our culture is very important. The people are the heart of what we do. That is what I’m most proud of.”
This is a brand built by operators who have both won big and been humbled. “Any time you could start a franchise with a franchisee background, you’re able to see it out of two different lenses,” Brandon said. “You take what’s good, you take what’s bad and you know how you can make it better.”
Urban Bird Hot Chicken’s momentum as a multi-brand operator took another step forward in March 2025, when Brandon and Chantel acquired Bun Slut, the cult-favorite smash burger concept.
The chicken segment, valued at a whopping $63.7 billion, is notoriously crowded. It is also easy to do badly. That is why the founders of Urban Bird still obsess over the details, specifically lighter breading, lower sodium, a crispier delivery fry and a quality-first process from brine to breading.
“We lead with our heart and we care about the people,” Chantel said. “The quality of the food is top-notch because we make everything fresh and not frozen. We bread it to order. Every single little detail is very important to us.”
Here is the truth most franchise candidates already know: a brand with two stores is still guessing. A brand with 20-plus stores has data. Brandon made it clear why Urban Bird waited to franchise until the corporate footprint was built.
“Before we started selling franchises, I wanted to open up a lot of these locations because I needed to see what worked,” he said. “Now with over 20 open, we’re really able to dig in, see the data, see the demographics and not leave it up to the franchisee to figure that out.”
Urban Bird has also tested footprint flexibility. Most locations have been second-generation builds, with sizes ranging roughly from 1,500 to 3,200 square feet.
“We’re able to test different models and different sizes,” Brandon said. “Almost all real estate has been second generation, for example, which cuts a lot of the cost.” In 2025 alone, those efforts cut nearly 7% from average store-level expenses, a reduction that directly impacts unit-level profitability.
And the results speak for themselves. The total investment necessary to begin operation of an Urban Bird Hot Chicken Restaurant under a franchise agreement is $236,300 to $837,800. In 2025, Urban Bird Hot Chicken reported gross sales across 11 operational company-owned locations. The highest-performing location was Round Rock, Texas, which generated $3,784,619 in gross sales for the year. Average gross sales in 2025, across all 12 company-owned locations, were approximately $1,739,036.
“We’ve opened enough stores now to know where this works and why it works,” Chantel said. “We don’t want franchisees figuring that out on their own. We want to hand them a model that’s been tested in the real world.”
Urban Bird is hitting a moment that is rare in franchising. The foundation is already there, but the franchise network is still in its earliest phase. That creates an unusual window for the right buyer.
“I never really feel like I made it,” Brandon said. “When I finally hit a goal, I’m already on the next goal. I need purpose and I need drive. There’s really nothing that I love more doing than building something.”
That mindset is important because it shapes the franchising posture. The founders are not selling franchises because they need a lifeline. They are opening franchising because they are ready to find true operating partners.
“We’re looking for solid operating partners,” Brandon said. “We’re not desperately trying to sell franchises.”
Looking ahead, the focus is on expanding from Texas into nearby, high-growth Sun Belt markets. If you are a restaurant operator who wants your next growth vehicle to be built by people who have actually done it at scale, this is the kind of window you watch for. The system is early enough to have real territory opportunity, but built enough to have real operating proof.
“We went through a lot of pain to get here,” Brandon said. “A lot of hard lessons. But we kept going, kept fixing what didn’t work and kept putting one foot in front of the other. We’ve been on both sides of this. We’ve been franchisees who struggled, franchisees who scaled and operators who had to figure things out the hard way. That experience shapes every decision we make at Urban Bird. I don’t know another hot chicken concept that’s been built this carefully. The opportunity is big, but the foundation matters more — and that’s what we’re most proud of.”
For more information, visit: https://www.urbanbirdhotchicken.com/franchise/.
Urban Bird Hot Chicken
SPONSORED
After scaling Wingstop to 32 locations, Brandon Gawthorp and Chantel Fiaschetti launched Urban Bird Hot Chicken, now franchising selectively with significant white space ahead.
Most emerging restaurant concepts franchise because they have to. They need franchise fees to fund the next phase, and they need someone else’s capital to figure out what should have been tested in company-owned stores. Urban Bird Hot Chicken, the hot chicken franchise based in Texas, is taking the opposite route.
The brand is franchising after building a real corporate footprint, learning the economics the hard way, tightening costs, stress-testing delivery and dialing in what works across different sites and footprints. Today, Urban Bird has opened more than 20 corporate locations in the Lone Star State and is on pace to reach 28 by the spring of 2026.
So, how did they do it? The founders, Brandon Gawthorp and Chantel Fiaschetti, don’t pretend that they just got lucky and stumbled into success. They’ve lived in the franchisee seat for a long time.
Urban Bird didn’t start as a “we should franchise this” idea. It started as a survival move that turned into a concept with real pull. By 2017, Brandon and Chantel were already seasoned operators. They had built a growing Wingstop portfolio, but they also made a bet on an early pizza concept that went sideways fast.
“We opened this pizza concept and ended up having to close the doors in 2018,” Brandon said. “It was a larger space and the rent was about $15,000 a month. So when we closed, we weren’t going to just walk away from a lease. We were going to do it right.”
They kept paying that rent for more than a year while trying to find a tenant. At the same time, Brandon had started noticing a food trend that felt like more than a fad, but he didn’t have a plan to build a brand around it yet.
That trend came into focus during a Vegas trip. “I’ve always had a thing for chicken and waffles,” he said. “And one of the items was a limited-time hot chicken sandwich. When I bit into that thing, I was like, ‘Wow, this is amazing.’ It felt like the first time I ever tasted hot chicken.”
Back in Houston, he tried to scratch the itch like a normal person. He went looking for hot chicken. The problem was that most of what was available didn’t hit the same. That’s when the founder brain kicked in, as well as when a practical opportunity appeared: a vacancy in the same shopping center where they were trapped in that expensive pizza lease.
“I texted the landlord,” Brandon said. “I was like, ‘Hey, you should let me open up a hot chicken restaurant. Let me switch spaces.’ I thought he would just kind of laugh at me, but he sent me a text back. He’s like, ‘Let’s talk.’”
So now the big problem wasn’t real estate. It was the product. This wasn’t a copy-and-paste menu. They built the core product from scratch, under pressure, during a chaotic time in the industry.
“Developing the recipe was the hardest thing,” Brandon said. “It took 60 experiments to get the chicken to where we felt it was perfect. What I wanted was very specific. Something very light, with crispy breading and not too much sodium.”
Urban Bird opened its first location in September 2020, in the thick of COVID. While many restaurants were still takeout-only, Brandon and Chantel believed guests would still show up for a safe dine-in experience. At the same time, they designed the model for off-premises demand, knowing delivery was here to stay.
“There was a lot of grit, a lot of pain and a lot of tears during that time,” Chantel said. “We just kept pushing and pushing, taking one step in front of the other, and here we are. That is why our culture is very important. The people are the heart of what we do. That is what I’m most proud of.”
This is a brand built by operators who have both won big and been humbled. “Any time you could start a franchise with a franchisee background, you’re able to see it out of two different lenses,” Brandon said. “You take what’s good, you take what’s bad and you know how you can make it better.”
Urban Bird Hot Chicken’s momentum as a multi-brand operator took another step forward in March 2025, when Brandon and Chantel acquired Bun Slut, the cult-favorite smash burger concept.
The chicken segment, valued at a whopping $63.7 billion, is notoriously crowded. It is also easy to do badly. That is why the founders of Urban Bird still obsess over the details, specifically lighter breading, lower sodium, a crispier delivery fry and a quality-first process from brine to breading.
“We lead with our heart and we care about the people,” Chantel said. “The quality of the food is top-notch because we make everything fresh and not frozen. We bread it to order. Every single little detail is very important to us.”
Here is the truth most franchise candidates already know: a brand with two stores is still guessing. A brand with 20-plus stores has data. Brandon made it clear why Urban Bird waited to franchise until the corporate footprint was built.
“Before we started selling franchises, I wanted to open up a lot of these locations because I needed to see what worked,” he said. “Now with over 20 open, we’re really able to dig in, see the data, see the demographics and not leave it up to the franchisee to figure that out.”
Urban Bird has also tested footprint flexibility. Most locations have been second-generation builds, with sizes ranging roughly from 1,500 to 3,200 square feet.
“We’re able to test different models and different sizes,” Brandon said. “Almost all real estate has been second generation, for example, which cuts a lot of the cost.” In 2025 alone, those efforts cut nearly 7% from average store-level expenses, a reduction that directly impacts unit-level profitability.
And the results speak for themselves. The total investment necessary to begin operation of an Urban Bird Hot Chicken Restaurant under a franchise agreement is $236,300 to $837,800. In 2025, Urban Bird Hot Chicken reported gross sales across 11 operational company-owned locations. The highest-performing location was Round Rock, Texas, which generated $3,784,619 in gross sales for the year. Average gross sales in 2025, across all 12 company-owned locations, were approximately $1,739,036.
“We’ve opened enough stores now to know where this works and why it works,” Chantel said. “We don’t want franchisees figuring that out on their own. We want to hand them a model that’s been tested in the real world.”
Urban Bird is hitting a moment that is rare in franchising. The foundation is already there, but the franchise network is still in its earliest phase. That creates an unusual window for the right buyer.
“I never really feel like I made it,” Brandon said. “When I finally hit a goal, I’m already on the next goal. I need purpose and I need drive. There’s really nothing that I love more doing than building something.”
That mindset is important because it shapes the franchising posture. The founders are not selling franchises because they need a lifeline. They are opening franchising because they are ready to find true operating partners.
“We’re looking for solid operating partners,” Brandon said. “We’re not desperately trying to sell franchises.”
Looking ahead, the focus is on expanding from Texas into nearby, high-growth Sun Belt markets. If you are a restaurant operator who wants your next growth vehicle to be built by people who have actually done it at scale, this is the kind of window you watch for. The system is early enough to have real territory opportunity, but built enough to have real operating proof.
“We went through a lot of pain to get here,” Brandon said. “A lot of hard lessons. But we kept going, kept fixing what didn’t work and kept putting one foot in front of the other. We’ve been on both sides of this. We’ve been franchisees who struggled, franchisees who scaled and operators who had to figure things out the hard way. That experience shapes every decision we make at Urban Bird. I don’t know another hot chicken concept that’s been built this carefully. The opportunity is big, but the foundation matters more — and that’s what we’re most proud of.”
For more information, visit: https://www.urbanbirdhotchicken.com/franchise/.
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