Raising Cane's Founder Invests Half a Million in One Shark Tank Episode

In addition to being a chicken-strip pusher extraordinaire, Todd Graves, co-founder of Raising Cane's, is an investor and a showman. The Baton Rouge native, worth $9.5 billion, likes a good deal when he sees one, which may be why he recently joined ABC's Shark Tank.

Graves loves to rub elbows with celebrities, notably Dallas-area native and pop star Post Malone, for whom he has created at least two restaurants: a pink restaurant in Salt Lake City, where Malone lives now, and the co-branded Malone-Dallas Cowboys restaurant in Dallas.

Graves has previously appeared on TV shows Restaurant Recovery and Secret Sauce, where he mentored and offered insights from his experience to other restaurateurs. A few years ago, he invested $100,000 in the local restaurant Smokey John's Bar-B-Que.

An interesting side note: according to Forbes, Raising Cane was the name of Graves' yellow lab about the time when he started his chicken empire. So, your first lesson on how to become a billionaire, kids, is to get a good puppy dog. As far as billionaires go, Graves is really hard not to like.  Jumping into the Shark Tank waters was a natural place for Graves, making splashes alongside regular hosts Mark Cuban, Lori Greiner, Daymond John and Kevin O’Leary. The episode is available on Hulu now. For anyone in the restaurant business, track down the episode for some quick but invaluable nuggets on how to make it in the food business. And, maybe more importantly, how not to lose money.

On the show, Graves loved the Topsail Steamer product: single-use pots filled with seafood, corn, potatoes and sausage. The buckets come frozen and are available at eight stores in the Northeast and can also be shipped via Gold Belly. The owner wants to open more stores to offer the pots around the country. An interesting piece of advice from Graves to the owner was she shouldn't franchise her business but instead pay managers "six figures," up from just $55,000 a year to make those managers her partners and not just employees. He invested $350,000 along with Lori Greiner for an 18% share of the company.

However, he passed on a concept that was a bucket of ice cream that looked like fried chicken from Life Raft. The product, "Not Fried Chicken" Ice Cream Bucket is available on Gold Belly. Turns out that no one invested in that idea.

Backyard golf buckets were a big hit on the show; it's sort of like chip shots into buckets using whiffle balls. Maybe it'll be the new Spike Ball. Or even better, it'll replace pickleball.

Another concept was a magnet for your car that would hold your skis after a day on the slopes. Graves loves to fish and ski and gave the duo $300,000 for 15% of the company.

Graves is supposed to appear on another show, but no information has been released on that yet.