Richmond’s Cocky Rooster restaurant expands, fittingly, to Gamecock country in S.C.

The Cocky Rooster’s Columbia storefront. (Courtesy Cocky Rooster)

For its first out-of-state location, the Cocky Rooster has flown south to the land of the Gamecocks. 

Earlier this month the Richmond-based fried chicken restaurant chain opened in Columbia, South Carolina, in a neighborhood adjacent to the University of South Carolina, a school whose mascot, fittingly, is the Gamecocks.

It also marks the Cocky Rooster’s expansion into franchising, co-owner Luke Phillips said. The South Carolina spot is the brand’s first franchise location to open, with others in the works in Virginia and North Carolina. 

Phillips said Columbia was a natural expansion. 

“We always talked about wanting to open in Columbia, because it’s the Gamecocks,” Phillips said. “It goes perfectly with what we’re doing.”

Known for its fried chicken sandwiches, tenders and wings, the Cocky Rooster opened in 2020 amid the pandemic with a carry-out-only spot in the Fan. A year later it added a Short Pump location and also operates a pair of food trucks. 

Luke Phillips

Phillips said the company always aspired to franchise its concept and began the process in earnest last year. 

“We opened and we told ourselves we’re not going to franchise until we have a perfect model,” he said. 

“We wanted to build something that takes away a lot of the pain points of the restaurant industry,” he said, referencing, as an example, the 3.5-day workweek the Cocky Rooster rolled out in 2022 to better retain employees.  

The Cocky Rooster’s franchise fee is $49,500. The group has also sold the franchise rights for Norfolk, Charlottesville and Raleigh, North Carolina, although locations in those areas have yet to open. 

The venture into franchising won’t preclude the Cocky Rooster from opening more corporate-owned stores. Phillips said the owners will look to open another corporate location somewhere in Virginia once the franchise spots are up and running. 

He said a nationwide franchise rollout also is not out of the question.  

“The low-hanging fruit that we’ve seen so far is college towns and football towns,” Phillips said. “That’s kind of our main focus right now, but yeah, we want to go everywhere.”