Chicken Salad Chick is opening a new restaurant in Sevierville, Tennessee on August 12, planting its flag in a market that draws significant tourism traffic along the Smoky Mountains corridor. The location at 739 Dolly Parton Parkway is the brand's third in the state and signals a deliberate pattern of market densification by experienced operators rather than greenfield single-unit expansion.
The unit is owned and operated by a five-person franchise group — James and Jessica Denham, Andy Tolley, and Chip and Beth Backus — who opened their first Chicken Salad Chick in Bristol in 2020 and followed with a Johnson City location. That track record matters: the brand's growth engine increasingly runs on multi-unit operators who understand regional consumer behavior and can absorb the opening-week cost of aggressive guest-acquisition programs.
The Grand Opening Play
The grand opening activation follows a tiered incentive structure across four days. On August 12, the first guest in line receives one free large Quick Chick of chicken salad per week for a year; the next 99 guests receive one per month for a year. Subsequent days offer branded merchandise and meal cards to the first 50 qualifying guests during two daily windows. All rewards are tied to app download and in-restaurant purchase — a mechanic that converts foot traffic into loyalty program enrollment from day one. For operators evaluating launch-week spend, this approach prioritizes measurable CRM acquisition over pure impression volume.
Franchise Intelligence
With more than 340 restaurants across 24 states, Chicken Salad Chick sits at a scale point where individual unit openings function as proof-of-concept for adjacent markets. Sevierville's tourism-driven foot traffic and family-oriented demographics align with what CEO and President Scott Deviney described as a community reflecting "the warmth, hospitality, and family-centered values that define our brand." For franchisees and area developers scouting similar markets, that framing is a signal about the brand's ideal site profile: mid-size Southern cities and high-traffic tourist zones with a family dining occasion.
Operators should also note the community-giving component built into the pre-opening calendar. The Sevierville team raised money for Isaiah 117 House — a foster care support nonprofit — during the Friends & Family event, consistent with the brand's CSC Foundation work supporting CURE Childhood Cancer and local food banks. Embedding cause-marketing into the launch sequence, rather than layering it on post-opening, is a replicable playbook worth attention for brand launch planning and local PR strategy.
For suppliers and vendors tracking fast casual expansion in the Southeast, this opening is a useful data point in a broader pattern. The brand's continued growth in Tennessee suggests distributor and packaging relationships are scaling accordingly — and that operator procurement decisions in similar multi-unit groups deserve attention from regional foodservice reps. The Sevierville location will operate Monday through Saturday, 10:30 a.m. to 8 p.m., offering dine-in, takeout, third-party delivery, and catering.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
