Raising Cane’s confirms three Charlotte-area restaurants, with Gastonia and Concord Mills opening in 2027

Raising Cane’s is finally building in the Charlotte market. The Baton Rouge chain confirmed to the Charlotte Business Journal this week that it has three restaurants under development in Gastonia, Concord and Pineville, WSOC reported, ending months of speculation that began when its name turned up in county traffic studies and hydrant tests last winter.

The Gastonia and Concord Mills restaurants are slated to open in 2027. The Pineville site is still in permitting. All three have active job postings for restaurant managers and assistant managers, according to the report.

Where they are going

The three sites ring the city instead of sit inside it, which fits how the chain has entered other markets: high-traffic retail corridors with drive-thru pads near malls. Public permits and the company’s confirmation give the specifics:

• Gastonia: construction is underway in the Franklin Square Shopping Center on East Franklin Boulevard. Gaston County issued a $1.6 million building permit for a 3,252-square-foot restaurant with a drive-thru and a patio, according to WSOC.
• Concord: a new building is going up at 8041 Concord Mills Boulevard, on a 1.83-acre outparcel near the mall. Cabarrus County issued a building permit valued at nearly $2.8 million, Charlotte Stories reported.
• Pineville: the restaurant is planned for the former Buca di Beppo at 10915 Carolina Place Parkway, a roughly 1.3-acre outlot beside Carolina Place mall. This is the site still in permitting.

The Rock Hill restaurant at 520 John Ross Parkway, which opened in February, was the chain’s first in the region and remains its only open location within an easy drive of Charlotte.

How the story surfaced

The chain did not announce its arrival. It was found. In early February a Cabarrus County filing titled Raising Cane’s Concord requested a traffic analysis at the Concord Mills address, and a second filing tied the company to a sewer allocation on the same parcel, Country 103.7 reported in March. A July 2025 Mecklenburg County filing named Raising Cane’s Hydrant Flow Testing pointed to the Carolina Place Parkway pad.

When WSOC asked about the addresses in March, a company spokeswoman said she did not see confirmed restaurant plans there and would check with the real estate team. Six months later the plans are confirmed, the permits are pulled and the hiring has started. Traffic studies and hydrant tests are the earliest steps a chain takes when scouting a site, and in this case they were accurate.

The two confirmed sites also tell a permitting story. Gaston County’s $1.6 million permit and Cabarrus County’s roughly $2.8 million permit were issued before the company said a word publicly, which is the normal order for a chain that prefers to announce openings, not intentions. Pineville’s slower path runs through a separate town planning process and a mall outparcel that last held a full-service Italian restaurant, so the drive-thru and traffic pattern require a different review than a vacant pad.

Why Charlotte waited

Raising Cane’s was founded in Baton Rouge in August 1996 by Todd Graves and Craig Silvey, and it has grown to more than 900 restaurants and about $5.1 billion in revenue with a menu that has barely changed: chicken fingers, crinkle-cut fries, coleslaw, Texas toast and the sauce. Its expansion has moved market by market instead of everywhere at once, and the Carolinas came late. The company’s North Carolina locations page listed restaurants elsewhere in the state well before Charlotte had one.

The delay put the chain into a crowded field. Charlotte has added several chicken concepts in recent years, and the arrival of a national brand with three sites at once, all with drive-thrus, is a bet that the market has room for one more. The Franklin Square and Concord Mills corridors are among the busiest retail strips in their counties, and the Carolina Place pad has the visibility a quick-service restaurant wants.

What to expect

The Gastonia and Concord restaurants should open sometime in 2027; the company has not given months. Pineville depends on permitting in Mecklenburg County and the town of Pineville, and the chain has not offered a date. The new buildings follow the company’s standard format, and the Gastonia permit’s 3,252 square feet is typical for a drive-thru unit.

For job seekers, the management postings are live now, and hourly hiring typically follows a few months before opening. For the neighborhoods, the practical effect is more drive-thru traffic on three corridors that already have plenty, which is the trade-off every one of these pads makes.

The Rock Hill restaurant is the reference point. It opened in February at 520 John Ross Parkway as the chain’s first in the Charlotte region, Charlotte Stories reported, and at seven months old it is the store closest to the three new sites and the one where local demand for the brand has been measured.

Why it matters

A national chain’s arrival is not usually news on its own. This one is because the Charlotte market waited years for it, because the company denied it in March, and because the three sites say something about where retail development is happening: not in the city’s core, where land is expensive and drive-thrus are contested, but on the mall corridors of Gaston, Cabarrus and south Mecklenburg.

Charlotte’s restaurant scene has a growing list of independent chicken houses, several of them in our directory, and the arrival of Raising Cane’s will test whether a very large brand with one recipe can pull customers from them. The answer will come in 2027, one drive-thru at a time.

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