Shaquille O’Neal’s Big Chicken restaurant signs first D-FW lease

Big Chicken, a fast-casual restaurant featuring the favorite foods of basketball player Shaquille O’Neal and his famous friends, is expected to make a towering entrance into Fort Worth in 2024.

As many as 56 Big Chicken restaurants are expected to open across Texas, in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio

The news is timely because O’Neal purchased a home in Collin County in 2022. So, are Dallas’ northern suburbs a focus for Big Chicken?

“I would be stunned if Plano was not in the cards,” says CEO Josh Halpern. He’s spent time looking in Plan

Just one lease has been signed in the 56-unit franchise deal, however: at 9755 North Freeway in Fort Worth

Big Chicken started in 2018 in Las Vegas and experienced almost no growth during the first year of the pandemic, which was common during such an uncertain time.

Halpern joined the company in May 2021, when Big Chicken had just two shops open and six on the way. The company will close 2023 with 28 Big Chicken restaurants.

“We don’t want to over-saturate a market, but we’re willing to make this as big as we possibly can,” he said in an interview with The Dallas Morning News in 2022. And then he jokes. (Or does he?) “If Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos want to talk, we’re happy to talk.”

Fried chicken and mac and cheese

The Original is one of Big Chicken’s most popular sandwiches, Halpern says. It’s one of the simpler options: a fried chicken sandwich with Shaq sauce and pickles.

Customers also tend to order a Nashville hot chicken sandwich called Uncle Jerome’s Nash

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Sides include French fries, sweet potato waffle fries and a mac and cheese modeled after the side made by Lucille O’Neal, Shaq’s mom. It has a Cheez-It crust because the famous basketball player has a partnership with Kellogg’s.

The menu ends with “monstrous-sized milkshakes,” as Halpern describes them.

Big Chicken’s expansion across Dallas

It isn’t known yet how many of the 56 coming-soon Big Chicken restaurants will land in Dallas-Fort Worth. That depends on how well the earliest restaurants do in each region, the CEO said in 2022.

Some locations are on Carnival Cruise ships or in tourist areas like the Moody Center in Austin, the Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle and near hotels in Las Vegas.

Shaq is the draw, Halpern says, but he believes the Texas franchisees can make big moves in an already-crowded fried-chicken space.

“People come the first time because they want to check out Shaquille’s restaurant,” he says, “and they come back because we were built by two really great chefs.”

Related:Dallas taco shop owners to launch ghost kitchen inside Walmart in Plano

While some of the Big Chickens in Texas will be drive-throughs, Halpern says every piece of chicken is dropped into the fryer after the order is placed, so it’s not as fast of a model as other chains. He compares Big Chicken to Shake Shack.

If they can do it, “so can we,” Halpern said in 2022.

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Story originally published in June 22, 2022 and updated Dec. 22, 2023 to include news on the first Big Chic