CREATING CANIACS: Raising Canes opens Tuesday in Odessa
Mar. 28—The wait is over.
Raising Cane's first Odessa location will open its doors for business at 10 a.m. Tuesday with a ribbon-cutting celebration beforehand at 9:30 a.m.
The popular chain's Odessa location on 42nd Street near Target will feature an all new look for the famous chicken spot as well as the largest kitchen in the chain.
Prior to the ribbon-cutting ceremony, Raising Cane's will accept entries from 8:30 a.m. to 9 a.m. for its "Lucky 20" drawing to award 20 customers ages 13 and older free Raising Cane's for a year.
Winners will be drawn between 9 a.m. to 10 a.m., and must be present to win. The first 100 dine-in customers will also receive a free Cane's T-shirt.
"In Odessa, there's a huge market for restaurants, especially quick service," Raising Cane's Area Leader of Restaurants Doug Haley said, "being out here is huge for us."
The Midland restaurant has been very successful for Raising Cane's.
"Because we have a ton people traveling from Odessa to Midland right now to get their chicken finger fix, coming to Odessa just makes sense," Haley said.
Haley explained that while the dine-in lobby is smaller than the one in Midland, the kitchen is the largest yet and first of a kind for the company.
"It's a different prototype, so the Midland restaurant is a different prototype with a larger dining room," Haley said. "This one is full dual lined kitchen, and so we've got an eight bank fryer on one side and a five bank fryer on the other side, this is something unique to Texas. First time we've ever built it like this. Dining room is definitely smaller but it's really built to rock it out in drive-thru."
Haley added: "Typically, our setup is run through one bank of fryers for drive thru, dine-in, take-out mobile, all those things right. So now that we are splitting it up, we are going to have an entire bank of fryers dedicated to drive-thru, another bank of fryers dedicated to dine-in which is going to make us more efficient there."
The restaurant did expand its seating area by adding seating outside on a patio.
"We have a multi-lane drive-thru that we're really proud of we've got some additional technology as well that we are really looking forward to bringing to the Odessa Community," Haley said.
The dual lined kitchen and multi-lane drive-thru is going to give the restaurant the ability to serve customers faster and at much higher volume than the Midland location.
"We would not be surprised to serve 5,000 to 6,000 daily," Raising Cane's Regional Leader of Restaurants Jacob Tatum said. "It could be one of our bigger openings in Texas. We have some pretty big ambitions, but we would not be surprised to see it.
"We look forward to creating more Caniacs."
Raising Cane's is still hiring crew and managers. Not just for Odessa, but for West Texas and for future growth.
"We are always looking for great people," Haley said.
Tatum added: "We are super excited to have hire over 200 crew, Midland has been phenomenal for us but we know we have a unique market here in Odessa. We have a lot of folks who haven't had it yet. We are thrilled to introduce to it to them. "
