Fuku's Playbook for Growing a Chef-Driven Chicken Brand Beyond the Storefront
Restaurant real estate is getting harder, and the latest Fast Casual Nation shows how one emerging brand is adapting. Hosts Paul Barron and Cherryh Cansler opened with a sobering data point: restaurant resales fell in 2026, and trusted franchise brands with proven systems are taking a growing share of the deals that do happen. High interest rates and construction costs are pushing buyers toward smaller, turnkey boxes. Landlords holding second-generation space know exactly what they have and are pricing accordingly. Both hosts agreed that the squeeze will be toughest on newer concepts, since nervous buyers tend to back what is already proven.
That backdrop set up the conversation with Claudia Lezcano, CEO of Fuku, the fried chicken concept David Chang launched in 2015 after a spicy chicken sandwich from the Momofuku Noodle Bar menu outgrew its origins. Lezcano's résumé spans Burger King, the Miami Dolphins, where she was the NFL's first female Latina chief marketing officer, the Miami Marlins and Church's Chicken. She has spent about three and a half years at Fuku. She described the brand as "quick culinary," meaning chef-level curiosity held to the same cost-of-goods discipline as any QSR. Her point was that a David Chang name earns attention but does not excuse a restaurant from managing margins.
Fuku's early growth came from sports venues, and the strategy shows in the numbers. The brand went from four venues to roughly 18 in three and a half years, and its footprint runs from Madison Square Garden to Yankee Stadium to arenas in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Las Vegas. Lezcano said the US Open menu is stripped down to a sando, tenders and fries, and that simplicity helped generate $2.7 million in sales over 23 days. Next come airports, with JFK opening in November and Seattle next year, and universities, starting with the University of Miami campus on October 5. The trade-offs are real. Deals vary from team to team, some requiring sponsorship dollars just to talk to an operator. And because the teams own the guest data, Fuku keeps a "qualitative" view of venue customers while owning the quantitative data only from its own restaurants.
Fuku's two corporate restaurants, at CityPlace in West Palm Beach and in Coral Gables, are meant to prove the business case before franchising begins. The company is hunting for three more South Florida sites, with an ideal footprint of about 2,100 square feet. Lezcano shared a lesson from an A/B test of second-generation space in Coral Gables against a fresh box in West Palm Beach. The costs came in similar, because inherited HVAC, refrigeration and freezer problems erased the expected savings. She targets rent at 8 to 10 percent of top-line sales. Landlords who have not heard of Fuku have sometimes chosen better-known chains, so the team runs immersion tours of its existing restaurants. She said a personal walkthrough, not an emailed deck, is what closed the Coral Gables deal with Terranova, and inbound requests from landlords have started to follow.
Her best real estate deal was an exit. Fuku had a poorly matched New York location with a 10-year guaranteed lease, lined up a replacement tenant willing to pay more, and walked away with $400,000. Paul called it a reminder for operators that a lease they can no longer make work may be worth more to someone else. Lezcano's broader advice was patience: the right spot beats the fast spot. She also addressed price perception. The OG Sando runs $12 and fries $6 in the restaurants, so a full meal comes in under $20, while venue prices run much higher because of the layers of partners taking a share.
On franchising, Lezcano said the goal is 15 to 20 franchise locations in the back half of 2028, sold to multi-unit operators committing to at least five units. She cautioned that her own team might say to slow down. Fuku wants at least 18 months of results from its first two restaurants before activating a pipeline of inbound interest. The build-out is targeted to come in under $1 million, with the equipment package as the largest expense, and she expects average unit volume near $1 million without a drive-thru. The hosts closed by promoting the Fast Casual Executive Summit, October 4 through 6, followed by a catering workshop, and by noting that the recent Yardbird Chapter 11 filing has put a spotlight on how difficult premium chicken can be.
