Houston is in the name, Nashville is on the menu, and Las Vegas is home.
Las Vegas-based Houston TX Hot Chicken was launched in 2021 and has around 30 locations nationally, including several in Southern Nevada. The chain of fried chicken eateries is now expanding overseas and recently hired a new executive to grow its footprint even more.
The restaurant chain announced in August that Ashley Prokos had joined the company as senior director of franchise sales.
She is tasked with overseeing recruitment of franchisees “to fuel the brand’s next phase of growth both domestically and abroad,” according to a news release.
Prokos said in the release that her focus is finding operators who share the passion for the brand, know their communities intimately, and have “operational discipline” as the company expands.
Prokos, in an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal, said she’s in charge of bringing on new restaurateurs across the U.S., with plans to double-down along the West Coast and then grow east from there.
She said the franchising contracts don’t require owners to keep opening additional outposts, but the company wants operators who will look to expand.
“We want owners who want more locations,” she said.
HHC, as the company calls itself, is a fast-casual restaurant brand that boasts award-winning Nashville hot-chicken sandwiches. It has eateries in nine states, with six locations in the Las Vegas Valley.
The menu features fried chicken sandwiches on brioche buns, chicken tenders and nuggets, and fries and salads topped with chunks of crispy poultry.
Its spice-meter ranges from no spice to an option that’s so hot it requires a waiver.
Prokos said its restaurants across the U.S. are a mix of corporate-owned and franchised outlets. In Las Vegas, its corporate office is in a business park on Ponderosa Way at Rainbow Boulevard, in the southwest valley.
The company is backed by Savory Fund, a restaurant-investment firm. The Utah-based group announced in November 2023 that it invested in HHC, calling the brand a “standout star of the ‘hot chicken’ phenomenon.”
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Later that month, the restaurant chain’s parent company, HHC Worldwide Inc., disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it had raised $12 million, records show.
More recently, the sandwich slinger unveiled its first international expansion in June, saying it had signed a master franchise agreement with London-based PizzaExpress to bring Houston TX Hot Chicken to the United Kingdom.
According to a news release, three HHC locations were slated to open in the UK this year, with plans for 50 outposts nationwide over the next three years.
Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342.
