The chicken chain with the cult following and the celebrity backers has picked its first Suffolk County address. Dave's Hot Chicken plans to open at 1822 Deer Park Avenue in Deer Park in October, according to the franchise group behind the location, bringing its Nashville-style sliders and tenders east of the Nassau line for the first time.

A Port Washington family is behind it

The Deer Park restaurant is being developed by Burger Brothers Restaurant Group, the Port Washington-based franchise organization run by the Froccaro family. The Froccaros are franchise veterans on Long Island, operating Burger King and QDOBA restaurants across the region, and in 2023 they signed on to develop 14 Dave's Hot Chicken locations, seven on Long Island and seven in Queens.

They opened their first, in Fresh Meadows, Queens, in January 2025, then brought the brand to Long Island proper in April 2025 with a restaurant at 207 Glen Cove Road in Carle Place. Deer Park will be their first move into Suffolk County, and the first Dave's in the county from any operator.

From a parking lot to 1822 Deer Park Avenue

Dave's Hot Chicken started in 2017 as a pop-up in an East Hollywood parking lot, where a young chef named Dave Kopushyan and three childhood friends set up a fryer, a folding table and a line of spice levels that ran from no spice at all to a pepper blend hot enough to require a signed waiver. The lines came fast, the restaurant chain followed, and the company attracted a run of high-profile investors, Drake among them, as it grew into one of the fastest-expanding fast casual brands in the country.

The menu stays deliberately short: chicken tenders and sliders on soft buns with pickles, kale slaw and shakes, with the heat level as the main decision. The mid-tier levels do the volume. The top of the ladder, called the Reaper, is the one that generates the videos.

The style itself is borrowed from Nashville, where hot chicken means a cayenne-heavy paste applied after the fry, so the burn builds rather than hits. Dave's translated that tradition into a fast casual format, and the formula has traveled: the Carle Place restaurant that opened in April 2025 as the brand's Long Island debut now runs until midnight most nights, unusual hours for the Old Country Road corridor and a sign of the demand the brand expects wherever it lands.

Suffolk is next, and more is coming

Deer Park is not meant to be the end of the map. The Froccaros have said publicly that further locations are planned, and reporting this year has pointed to sites at 141 Alexander Avenue in St. James and 3963 Hempstead Turnpike in Levittown as next in the pipeline. A Riverhead location was also announced in 2025 for the East End.

That puts Deer Park in a familiar role. The hamlet's commercial corridor along Deer Park Avenue and the nearby Tanger Outlets have become a proving ground for chains testing Suffolk, and a brand with lines out the door in Carle Place has good reason to expect the same reception here.

What to watch for

The franchise has committed to October without naming a day, and Dave's own site does not yet list the Deer Park address among its locations. The pattern from Carle Place suggests how it will go: an announced date a few weeks out, a soft opening for the neighborhood, then a line that wraps the building for the first weekend.

For Deer Park, Wyandanch and North Babylon readers, the practical version is this: the sandwich people have been driving 30 minutes west for will be on your own avenue before Halloween, and the only question left is exactly which October day the fryers turn on.