When Usher's Dave's Hot Chicken franchise opened in Conyers, Georgia, the store rang up more than $20,000 on opening night without a single system failure. That's not luck. Dave's has recorded 100 percent point-of-sale uptime across more than 30 consecutive store openings.
The chain that started as a $900 parking lot pop-up in 2017 now runs about 440 stores, is on pace to pass $1 billion in systemwide sales, and has a majority stake owned by Roark Capital. Keeping that machine running is a tech stack most people never see, and a multiyear tech program the company calls Dave's of the Future.
Start at the register. Dave's outgrew its old POS and moved to Qu, which puts an edge-computing device in every store. Orders and payments keep processing even if the internet goes down, which happened during a New Jersey opening and the store never missed a transaction. The switch also cut on-site IT support for new store openings from four days to nearly zero.
In the kitchen, Dave's runs its display screens on QSR Automations. The system flags any order that deviates from the default, so the line and expo catch special requests at a glance. Off-premise orders make up about 40 percent of sales, so the chain added order ready boards that let delivery drivers check status from the door instead of crowding the expo station. It's also testing dynamic quote times, because a busy Friday night can mean a 45-minute ticket, and Dave's would rather tell guests that upfront than have them wait at the counter.
Even menu decisions run through data. Before rolling out its cauliflower-based Dave's NOT Chicken nationally, the chain used Bikky, which tracks purchase behavior across more than 10 million customers who never joined the loyalty program, to confirm the item brought in new guests instead of cannibalizing chicken sales.
Do note, not everything gets scaled. According to RestaurantDive Dave's pulled back its drive-thru voice AI after guests made it clear they didn't want to talk to a robot, robotic fry cooks remain in just four test stores while the chain waits out the cost, and computer vision for order accuracy worked in calm conditions but couldn't keep up with a busy kitchen, so it got shelved.
Next test to watch: drone delivery near Cal State Northridge. In a test with Matternet near Cal State Northridge, a delivery that takes 15 minutes by car took about 90 seconds by drone, and Dave’s wants this fully running by end of summer. Dave’s is also talking to Zipline about the Dallas market, and is setting up robot delivery in Arizona through DoorDash's Dot program.
That is Dave’s of the Future in practice: test aggressively, cut what guests reject, and scale the tech that allows one of the fastest growing restaurants in the U.S. to expand sustainably.