We Speak Business

A Dozen Doors in One Month: Raising Cane’s Opens 12 Restaurants Across 10 States in November

Published

3 days ago

November 12, 2026

Inside a Raising Cane's restaurant in South Beach, Miami Beach. Photo by Phillip Pessar, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0).

Raising Cane’s is having the kind of month most restaurant chains dream about. The Baton Rouge chain built on chicken fingers, crinkle fries, Texas toast and one famous sauce will open 12 new restaurants across 10 states in November alone, nearly double its October pace.

Three of the November openings are firsts in their markets. Brick, New Jersey, and Spanish Fork, Utah, opened the month on November 2, followed by the chain’s debut in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on November 5. A North Miami Beach restaurant followed on November 9, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, gets its first Cane’s on November 17, and Walker, Michigan, and Walnut Creek, California, open November 20. The month closes with a four-store day on November 23, in Waterbury, Connecticut; Homewood, Illinois; Jacksonville, Florida; and Birmingham, Alabama.

“Opening 12 new Restaurants in November is another exciting milestone in Raising Cane’s continued growth as we expand our footprint and bring our ONE LOVE to even more communities across the country,” a Raising Cane’s representative said. The company also noted its restaurants will close on Thanksgiving, Thursday, November 26, so crew members can celebrate with their families.

The November wave caps a landmark year. Raising Cane’s opened its 1,000th restaurant worldwide in March, a flagship on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, and it finished 2025 with 913 locations and $5.48 billion in sales, according to Technomic figures reported by Nation’s Restaurant News. About 300 more restaurants sit in the development pipeline, and the stated long-term goal is 1,600-plus locations, which would put the chain among the top 10 U.S. restaurant brands by unit count.

All of it is company-owned; Raising Cane’s does not franchise. The map is also about to go international, with a first European flagship planned for London’s Piccadilly Circus and a Mexico entry through a development partnership with Alsea, both targeted for 2027. Not bad for a company Todd Graves started with one restaurant in Baton Rouge in 1996 and named after his yellow Labrador.

We Speak Business

A Second Sphere Is Coming to America: Maryland Approves the $1.4 Billion National Harbor Venue

Published

3 days ago

November 12, 2026

We Speak Media

The Sphere in Las Vegas. Photo by Nigel Hoult, via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0).

The glowing orb that rewired the Las Vegas skyline is officially getting an East Coast sibling. On October 27, the Prince George’s County Council voted 8 to 0 to approve the financing package for Sphere at National Harbor, a $1.4 billion entertainment venue planned for the Potomac River waterfront in Maryland.

The Maryland Sphere will be the first smaller-scale version of the format: about 6,000 seats, against roughly 17,600 at the Las Vegas original, which opened on September 29, 2023. Smaller does not mean stripped down. The venue is planned with the same signature technology, including a 16K by 16K interior LED display, an exterior LED exosphere, spatial audio, haptic seating and 4D environmental effects, on a site next to MGM National Harbor in Oxon Hill, about 15 minutes from downtown Washington, D.C.

The county’s vote authorizes up to $215 million in special obligation bonds to support the project, which Sphere Entertainment is developing with Peterson Companies. The package includes $130 million in tax increment financing bonds, a $40 million county-owned parking garage and $13.5 million in state funding, with Sphere Entertainment covering the roughly $1.2 billion balance.

Construction is expected to begin in 2027, with an opening targeted for early 2030. If the timeline holds, National Harbor will be the third Sphere on the planet: a full-scale, 20,000-seat venue in Abu Dhabi is expected to be completed in 2029. The message from the company is clear. The Sphere is no longer a one-off Las Vegas spectacle. It is a format, and it is on its way to the world.