What Raising Cane's Replaced on 13 New York Corners, From Walgreens to Mel's

In June 2023 Raising Cane's, the Louisiana chain that sells chicken fingers and close to nothing else, opened an 8,000-square-foot flagship at 1501 Broadway in Times Square and said 25 more stores were coming to the New York area, the Bronx and Long Island included. On October 27, 2026, the chain's own locator lists 13 in the state, all of them in the city: four in Manhattan, four in Brooklyn, five in Queens. None in the Bronx. None on Staten Island. The menu at every one is the same: chicken fingers, crinkle-cut fries, Texas toast, coleslaw, Cane's sauce, and a sandwich that is three of the fingers on a bun.

A store like that can drop into almost any storefront with enough foot traffic, so the real question is the corner. We went address by address to find out what each one was before. For four of the 13, plus the one the chain wants next, the published record says. For the other nine it doesn't, and we say that too.

The flagship opened June 27, 2023, in the Paramount Building. Co-CEO Todd Graves told Nation's Restaurant News the chain had held off on New York until it could open several stores at once, with leadership and a supply chain built for the region. The building's retail leasing firm, Levin Management, had announced the deal in April 2022 as the lease that finished re-tenanting the building's retail. A Hard Rock Cafe sits in the same building. What the Cane's space held before isn't in anything we found, so we leave it there.

Then the spread. Astor Place opened September 13, 2023, according to NYU's student paper. Kings Highway in Sheepshead Bay followed on October 24, the first in Brooklyn, with a customer in line at 6:30 in the morning, News 12 reported. The Fulton Mall store, at Fulton and Jay, opened January 30, 2024. The Penn Station store, in the LIRR concourse at 1 Penn Plaza, opened May 30, 2024. Flushing came that July and Jamaica in December. The Upper West Side store opened in September 2025, Forest Hills in October 2025, Jackson Heights on January 21, 2026, and Laurelton on May 13, 2026, with the first drive-thru in Queens.

One store has dropped out of the count. When the Columbia Spectator wrote about the Upper West Side lease in July 2024, it named 124 West 125th Street in Harlem as the chain's closest location. In August 2025, I Love the Upper West Side called 2850 Broadway the chain's fifth Manhattan store. The locator now lists four in Manhattan, and 125th Street isn't one of them. We found no report of a closing, and the chain hasn't said why.

Astor Place. The chain lists this store at 20 Astor Place. When EV Grieve reported the lease in April 2022, citing the New York Business Journal and Commercial Observer, it put the space at No. 10, on the Lafayette Street corner, about 4,300 square feet on the ground floor, and noted it had been a Walgreens until August 2020. The lease was for 20 years. When the chain's sign went up in March 2023, EV Grieve placed it on the same corner. One national chain left; another signed for two decades.

39-20 Main Street, Flushing. The first Queens store took a space that had been a Burger King, QNS reported in May 2024.

159-29 Jamaica Avenue, Jamaica. Same story. QNS reported in November 2024 that the store was going into a former Burger King. Two of the five Queens stores swapped one national chain for another.

2850 Broadway, Morningside Heights. This is the corner people still bring up. Mel's Burger Bar sat between 110th and 111th Streets for more than ten years and was a Columbia hangout, the Spectator reported. It closed in December 2023. Raising Cane's signed the lease after it closed, said construction would start in early 2025, and set the opening for September 4, 2025, with 20 customers getting free Cane's for a year and a $1,000 check for the West Harlem Arts Alliance. A chain spokesperson said the goal was to bring its chicken finger meals to Morningside Heights. Mel's had been feeding that block with burgers for a decade, without the giveaway.

2067 Broadway, between 71st and 72nd Streets, was most recently Freshly Bagel, which lasted less than a year, and Gigi Cafe before that, I Love the Upper West Side reported in August 2025. A Raising Cane's representative told the site the chain was slated to bring its meals there in 2026, pending city approval. At the time there was no sign and no serious work under way.

As of October 27, 2026, 2067 Broadway isn't on the chain's locator, and we found no report that it has opened. The chain hasn't said publicly which approval it is waiting on. What the record does show is a storefront that turned over twice in a short stretch, with a national chain lined up behind both tenants.

For nine of the 13 addresses, nothing we could find in print says what was there first. Times Square, as above. 1523 Kings Highway, the first Brooklyn store. 447 Fulton Street, on the Jay Street corner of the Fulton Mall. The Penn Station concourse. 2143 Flatbush Avenue. 70-28 Austin Street in Forest Hills. 81-11 Roosevelt Avenue in Jackson Heights, which opened in January to a QNS story about chains piling up on the avenue, where Annetta Seecharran of Chhaya CDC said chains push out locally owned restaurants; nobody in that story tied it to the Cane's address, and neither do we. 230-05 Merrick Boulevard in Laurelton, the drive-thru.

The ninth, 506 Utica Avenue in East Flatbush, has a paper trail of a different kind. It is a 3,000-square-foot building on a 0.58-acre lot, built in 2025. A JLL listing offers it to investors for $13,685,000 at a 4.75% cap rate. What's for sale is the rent: a 20-year ground lease to Raising Cane's, with the rent going up 10% every five years and five more five-year options after that. Run every option and that's up to 45 years of chicken fingers on one East Flatbush lot, priced like a bond. What stood on the lot before 2025 isn't in the listing, and we didn't find it anywhere else.

If you know what any of these nine corners was, tell us. We'll add it, with the source.

Here's what the list says. Where the record exists, Raising Cane's took a pharmacy that had already left, two Burger Kings, a burger bar that fed a campus for a decade, and it has its eye on a bagel shop that couldn't make a year. The Burger King swaps cost those blocks nothing they hadn't already given up. Mel's and the bagel shop are the ones to watch.

The difference is the lease. A small operator on Broadway signs for what it can carry and hopes the rent holds. A chain with one menu and a supply line built for a region signs for 20 years at Astor Place, signs a 20-year ground lease on Utica Avenue, and in East Flatbush an investor is asked to pay $13.7 million for the right to collect the rent. Put those two tenants in front of a landlord and one of them looks like a hope while the other looks like a bond.

You can like the chicken. Plenty of people do: somebody was in line on Kings Highway at 6:30 in the morning. The chain also promised the Bronx, and three years in, the Bronx has none. But when the next sign goes up on your block, look at what it replaced. Then think about which independent operator on that block could have signed for 20 years. At 2850 Broadway the burger bar that fed a campus for ten years closed first, and the chain signed after. At 2067 Broadway the bagel shop didn't make a year, and the chain was already waiting. That's the trade this list shows, and a neighborhood should see it before the sign goes up, not after.