19-Unit Starbird Signs 36-Store Texas Deal to Triple Its Footprint

A San Francisco chicken chain with 19 locations just signed the largest franchise agreement in its history. The franchisee? A Texas auto dealership empire.

Starbird, the "super-premium fast-casual" chicken concept founded in 2016, has inked a 36-unit development deal with Mac Haik Restaurant Group (MHRG) to bring the brand to Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and the Dallas-Fort Worth corridor. Openings are slated to begin in 2027. When complete, the agreement will nearly triple Starbird's current unit count, taking it from 19 locations across California and Colorado to more than 55 systemwide.

For a brand that has spent a decade proving the model in one market, this is a step-change moment. It is also a window into two converging trends reshaping the franchise development landscape: the ongoing appetite for chicken-focused fast casual, and the emergence of non-food operating companies as serious franchise investors.

Who Is Mac Haik, Exactly?

MHRG is not your typical multi-unit restaurant operator. Its parent company, Mac Haik Enterprises, is one of Texas' largest automotive dealership groups, with a portfolio spanning multiple brands and markets across the state. The restaurant group arm pivoted into hospitality and foodservice as a diversification play, and it has executed that pivot with notable discipline.

MHRG's flagship restaurant holding is First Watch Daytime Cafe, the breakfast-and-lunch focused fast casual that has become one of the industry's most-watched growth stories. MHRG is First Watch's largest franchisee, and in 2024, the company was named First Watch Franchisee of the Year. That award is not ceremonial. It signals operational consistency, financial stability, and a genuine understanding of how to scale a hospitality concept.

The First Watch pedigree matters here. First Watch is a genuine-service, quality-ingredient concept with a loyal daytime customer base. It is not the same category as Starbird, but operating it successfully requires exactly the skill set that converts franchise agreements into actual thriving locations: hiring and retaining service-oriented staff, sourcing ingredients at volume without compromising quality, building local brand recognition from scratch, and maintaining unit-level economics through the early growth period.

MHRG has done all of that. That track record almost certainly factored into Starbird's decision to hand its Texas expansion to a car dealer.

The Unconventional Franchisee Pipeline

The auto-dealer-to-restaurant-franchisee pipeline is underreported in trade coverage, but it is real and growing. Automotive group principals share several traits that translate directly to franchise operations: they are accustomed to managing large, complex physical assets; they run high-revenue, operationally intensive businesses; they understand how to build and retain local customer relationships; and they tend to have the balance sheet capacity that multi-unit franchise development demands.

Dealership margins have compressed in recent years under the pressure of EV transition, inventory normalization, and digital disruption to the retail buying process. Capital that once recycled comfortably within automotive is now seeking adjacent diversification, and franchise-based restaurant chains, with their asset-light brand structures and predictable royalty streams, have become an attractive destination.

Mac Haik's path from cars to First Watch to Starbird is a useful case study. The pattern is not an accident. It is capital allocation logic applied by operators who know how to run complex, customer-facing businesses.

What Starbird Is Selling Into

The $34 billion chicken segment is not short on competition. Texas, specifically, is brutal territory for any new entrant, premium or otherwise.

Raising Cane's has crossed 1,000 units nationally and is headquartered in Louisiana, with deep roots and intense brand loyalty across the Gulf Coast states. In Houston and Dallas particularly, Cane's occupies a cultural position that most chicken concepts cannot touch. Its menu is intentionally minimal: chicken fingers, crinkle fries, coleslaw, bread, Cane's sauce. The concept has spent 25 years building brand equity on exactly that simplicity.

Chick-fil-A is the 500-pound gorilla in any chicken conversation. Its Texas presence is extensive and its unit volumes are without peer in the segment. Every chicken concept that enters a Texas market is entering Chick-fil-A's home territory in some meaningful sense.

Dave's Hot Chicken, the fast-growing Nashville hot chicken brand backed by private equity, has been aggressively building its Texas footprint through franchise development, competing directly in the urban fast-casual market that Starbird is targeting.

Starbird's positioning answer is the "super-premium" tier. The brand sources antibiotic-free chicken and emphasizes house-made sauces, premium ingredients, and a curated menu experience. The thesis is that there is a customer segment in Texas urban markets who want something beyond the mainstream chicken chains, are willing to pay for it, and are not already fully served.

That segment exists. Whether it is large enough to support 36 stores across four major metros is the operational question Starbird and MHRG are betting on together.

The Market Math

Building to 36 units in Texas over the coming years is an ambitious development schedule for a brand with 19 total locations. The concentration of planned activity across Houston, Austin, San Antonio, and Dallas-Fort Worth means MHRG will need to execute site selection, construction, staffing, and local marketing across four distinct metro contexts simultaneously, or in rapid succession.

Houston is the largest market by population and arguably the most competitive, with a restaurant culture shaped by significant disposable income, diverse culinary influences, and high QSR density. Austin's fast-casual market is crowded at the premium tier, with a population that has been heavily courted by concepts positioning on quality and transparency. San Antonio has a strong and growing QSR presence but historically has been a secondary launch market for premium concepts entering Texas. DFW represents the state's most affluent suburban market base, but also has the highest concentration of established chicken competition.

Each of these markets will require MHRG to build brand awareness from zero. Starbird has no existing consumer recognition in Texas. That awareness-building phase is often the most expensive and most unforgiving part of a multi-unit franchise expansion: sites are selected before traffic patterns are proven locally, labor markets in each metro are distinct, and the brand cannot rely on reputation to carry early sales.

MHRG's First Watch experience is directly relevant here. First Watch was a regional brand when MHRG grew it in Texas, and the company knows what the early units of a quality fast-casual expansion look like from the inside.

Why This Deal Is Worth Watching

The Starbird-MHRG agreement is not the biggest franchise deal announced this year. But it captures something that larger deals sometimes obscure: the mechanics of how a premium regional brand actually achieves national scale.

Starbird is not raising capital to build company-owned stores across the Sun Belt. It is licensing its brand and operations system to a well-capitalized, operationally credible partner who has explicitly chosen to bet on it over a range of available franchise alternatives. That vote of confidence from MHRG, a group that had other options, carries signal value.

The agreement also reflects the continuing willingness of investors outside the traditional restaurant operating world to take serious positions in fast-casual chicken. The category has drawn private equity, family offices, regional operators, and now automotive enterprise capital. Each new entrant type brings different expectations, different time horizons, and different operational strengths. The brands that learn to match the right franchisee to the right market continue to grow. The ones that take capital without validating operational fit tend to produce the same closure stories that have defined the past two years of casual and fast-casual consolidation.

Starbird starts Texas in 2027 with 19 units behind it, a proven partner in front of it, and some of the most competitive chicken competition in the country waiting on arrival. The outcome will depend on whether super-premium positioning holds at Texas price points, how quickly MHRG can build local brand recognition, and whether the sites selected in those four metros generate the unit-level economics that justify the rest of the development schedule.

That is the bet both parties have made. The industry will be watching.

Sources: Restaurant Dive, Nation's Restaurant News, Franchise Times, Restaurant Business Online