Here's a fun debate for you: What's killing fast food quality? Todd Graves, founder and co-CEO of Raising Cane's, has a pretty clear answer. It's the money people.

Venture capital and private equity firms that have been snapping up fast food chains are systematically dismantling the very things that made those restaurants beloved in the first place, Graves said during a recent appearance on the YouTube talk show "Hustle Meals."

"It's like death by a thousand cuts," Graves explained. "Ultimately, if your motivation is money then you're not gonna care. You're going to let those great quality things go down…that's what's happened to fast food."

The Cost-Cutting Playbook

Host Josh Scherer had pointed out the irony of fast food's core promise: replicability and consistency. Yet somehow, as chains expand, that consistency tends to evaporate. Graves jumped on that observation.

The problem, according to Graves, starts when investment firms take controlling stakes and immediately prioritize profits over everything else. "That's when the CFOs jump in and say, 'You know what? We don't need to make our sauce in house at every restaurant,'" he said. "We can make it in a commissary and we'll save 'X.'"

It's the classic private equity move: find small efficiencies, multiply them across hundreds of locations, and watch the margins improve. Great for the spreadsheet, less great if you're the customer who notices the sauce tastes different.

Graves also pointed to what he sees as a fundamental issue in the industry: "a lack of founders that care" about their restaurants. "I care that everybody gets a good quality, craveable meal in a place that's food-safe, friendly, and we're getting them their food fast," he said.

Private Equity's Fast Food Feast

The takeover of fast food by financial firms isn't some conspiracy theory. It's been happening at scale. Roark Capital holds controlling interests in Subway, Dunkin', Arby's, and Buffalo Wild Wings. Earlier this month, Denny's went private in a deal involving TriArtisan Capital Advisors, Treville Capital Group, and Yadav Enterprises.

Why the feeding frenzy? Brian Alas, managing director at investment bank Boxwood Partners, laid it out clearly: "Private equity and venture capital firms are drawn to fast-food and fast-casual concepts because they combine reliable, recurring revenue with scalable unit-level economics. These businesses operate on predictable margins, require relatively low capital to replicate, and benefit from consistent consumer demand even during economic downturns."

The numbers back up that appetite. Restaurant mergers and acquisitions hit more than $25 billion in disclosed deal value in 2024, Alas noted, with nearly 70% of those deals involving franchise-based restaurant systems.

"A clear signal of investor confidence in the category's durability and scalability," Alas said. "The franchised structure also reduces execution risk, since local operators shoulder day-to-day operations while the parent brand maintains system-wide strategy and support."

Translation: Investors love businesses where someone else does the hard work while they collect the checks.

The Billionaire Who Won't Sell

Graves has put his money where his mouth is. He's the majority owner of Raising Cane's and is worth $22 billion, according to Forbes. And he's not interested in cashing out.

The origin story is the stuff of entrepreneurial legend. Graves worked as a boilermaker in oil refineries and on fishing boats in Alaska to raise capital for his first restaurant. He cobbled together small investments from coworkers at those jobs and secured a Small Business Administration loan to get started.

Both Graves and his co-CEO, AJ Kumaran, have repeatedly stated in interviews that the company has zero plans to go public or sell to external investors. The reason? They want to preserve the chain's culture.

And here's the thing: staying private hasn't exactly held them back. Raising Cane's has become one of the fastest-growing fast food chains in the country. The company generated just under $5 billion in total US sales and ranked as the third highest-selling chicken restaurant behind Popeyes and Chick-fil-A, according to industry publication QSR Magazine.

Aggressive Expansion, No Outside Money

The growth trajectory is impressive. Raising Cane's opened 118 restaurants in 2024, the company announced in January. Plans call for adding 100 more locations by the end of this year, which would bring the total to 1,000 restaurants, Kumaran told Fast Company in September.

International expansion is also in the works. The company plans to open its first European location in London's Piccadilly Circus in 2026, according to media reports. Raising Cane's has already established international outposts in the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia.

The domestic footprint is nearly complete: all but four US states have a Raising Cane's location, plus one in the US territory of Guam.

So maybe there's an alternate path here. Maybe you can build a multi-billion dollar fast food empire without sacrificing quality at the altar of quarterly earnings. Or maybe Graves is just the exception that proves the rule. Either way, it's worth asking: when you bite into that fast food chicken sandwich, are you tasting the work of someone who cares, or the output of a value-engineering exercise dreamed up in a conference room three states away?