An Arkansas-based restaurant chain called Slim Chickens is now looking to expand to the Baltimore region. It comes as another Southern chicken-focused chain - Raising Cane's - announced plans to open more than 10 locations here.
Darrin Atlas, current owner of multiple Firehouse Subs locations in Maryland, opened a Slim Chickens restaurant in the Bowie area of Prince George's County in 2021.
He's now bringing Slim Chickens this month to a location in California, St. Mary's County. Another restaurant will open Crofton, Anne Arundel County, in mid- to late 2023.
Besides chicken tenders and wings, the restaurant offers sandwiches, wraps, salads, chicken & waffles, unique sides like fried pickles and fried okra, milkshakes, and Mason-jar desserts.
"We saw Slim Chickens and fell in love with it immediately," Atlas said about the chain. "It's a beautiful restaurant... Then we ate the food, it was just kind of a life-changing situation... It's just fried chicken, but it tastes amazing - the chicken & waffles, everything we have, the food is great."
"Our ability to find great people to continue to go to the next location is really going to be our only obstacle from us trying to grow as many as we possibly can... We're looking at all areas of Maryland," he said.
He noted some other potential franchisees from Baltimore have come down to check out the Bowie store. "There is other interest in Maryland, other than us. We would love to do as many as possible, but we would also love other people to spread the growth in the market."
Slim Chickens has more than 100 locations, including 12 in the United Kingdom and in Kuwait.
