The TowerBrook Capital Partners-backed group, which also owns the ASK Italian, Zizzi, Boojum and Coco di Mama brands, is working towards a potential process happening later this year, according to Bloomberg.
Azzurri won the master franchise rights for the Nashville-style chicken brand, which counts actor Samuel L. Jackson and singer Usher among its backers, in the UK and Ireland in 2024 with an aim to open 60 sites in the coming years.
The brand made its UK debut on London’s Shaftesbury Avenue in late 2024, which became the highest grossing sales site ever opened by Azzurri, and currently operates nine sites across the UK with several more set to launch this year.
Speaking to restaurant’s sister title MCA last year, Azzurri CEO Steve Holmes said the demand for Dave’s Hot Chicken at its UK restaurants is ‘enormous’ and has ‘totally smashed’ the group’s expectations.
“I’ve never experienced anything like this in my 30 years of working in restaurants,” he said. “It has a huge social media reach with four million followers on TikTok and two million on Instagram, despite it only having 350 restaurants globally.”
Dave’s Hot Chicken was founded by childhood friends Dave Kopushyan, Arman Oganesyan and Tommy Rubenyan in 2017 as a pop up in LA and opened its first permanent site in East Hollywood the same year.
It operates more than 200 sites across America, as well as locations in Canada and the Middle East.