Boston University’s newest on-campus eatery, Raising Cane’s, opened its doors in a small ceremony Thursday morning.
About 30 ‘Very Important Caniacs’ from the BU administration attended the grand opening of the new chicken finger restaurant located on the corner of Commonwealth Avenue and Harry Agganis Way.
Todd Graves, founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Raising Cane’s, said he was ‘very, very excited’ to open his 87th restaurant.
‘Y’all gave us the opportunity to come up here,’ Graves said. ‘We appreciate the partnership and we’re going to give people great quality food.’
Director of Dining Services Barbara Laverdiere spoke before the ribbon cutting ceremony, saying she and her colleagues quickly became converts and ‘Caniac’s’ after sampling food at the chain’s Ohio restaurant opening.
‘We realized this was really somebody we wanted to do business with,’ Laverdiere said. ‘And in just two months, we got it built.’
Graves held a golden pair of scissors to cut through the red ribbon and invited the special guests inside for a luncheon before the restaurant was open to the public.
Laverdiere said this was the first Raising Cane’s restaurant to be directly on campus. Students will be able to use convenience points at the restaurant, she said.
Inside, BU administrators ordered from the four key menu items and admired images of Rhett on wall-sized posters.
Graves said he started planning the business as a college student, but his professor said that having so few choices on the menu was a bad idea. ‘I got the worst grade in the class,’ Graves said. ‘But I knew what college students wanted to eat.’
But now there are 20 Raising Cane’s near other college campuses nationwide. The company had been looking into opening up a restaurant in the New England area for some time, Graves said.
‘We started talking to Aramark a couple of years ago, who worked with the university to get Raising Cane’s here,’ he said.
The festivities continued with a parade from the George Sherman Union to the restaurant featuring the BU drumline, all wearing Raising Cane’s t-shirts. Rhett showed his support by waving a Cane’s flag. Some students won a years supply of Cane’s, while others won free T-shirts.
Graves said he was eager to integrate the restaurant with the rest of BU, making an effort to ‘go green’ by serving food on compostable products and keeping the restaurant open until midnight most days to accommodate students’ late night schedules.
‘It’s just part of campus life,’ he said. ‘We’re going to look into staying open later if there’s a demand from students.’
BU event specialist Karleigh Antista, who attended the opening ceremony, said she had never been to a Raising Cane’s before, so this was her first time trying the food.
‘It will be nice to see how it catches on here on campus,’ Antista said.
Staff reporter Jenna Ebersole contributed to the reporting of this article.
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