The Chicken Brand Heating Up on Social 🔥🍗 (HBBIP #133)

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While you wouldn’t guess it from my author photo, in which I look like I only recently emerged from the basement where I live, I actually love spicy food.

Granted, longtime readers/knowers of CreatorIQ lore are already aware of my fondness for scoville units. You might recall the time that I was compelled by the vagaries of staying employed to eat a series of increasingly spicy wings on CreatorIQ's podcast. 

Fun stuff! Please don’t sue us, Hot Ones. It wasn’t my idea.

But even if it wasn’t my idea, the intestinal fortitude on display in that video is something I pride myself on. Whether preparing food to eat at home or dining at restaurants, I seek bold flavors and plenty of spice. Thankfully, it seems that more and more restaurants are meeting me where I’m at. 

And I do mean where I’m at. In prior newsletters, I’ve lamented the unavailability of certain options right here in my neighborhood, from Trader Joe’s to Dutch Bros. But whenever I re-watch my podcast appearance, whether in my former home of Los Angeles or my present home in Brooklyn, I know that there’s a convenient option for spicy chicken right at my fingertips.

Turns out that a lot of other social media users know it too. So grab a bib, some milk, and maybe an antacid, and prepare to see what all the fuss is about!

The Top Brand of All Time (of the Week): Dave's Hot Chicken

Look, I love Popeyes and Raising Cane’s enough to have previously profiled each brand in this newsletter, but Dave is making a case for himself. If you haven’t sampled his wares yet, there’s a good chance that a location is arriving somewhere near you very soon.

What Is Dave's Hot Chicken?

Founded in Pasadena, which is exactly where you’d expect a spice-forward soul food franchise to have originated, Dave’s Hot Chicken launched in 2017 and was acquired for $1 billion just eight years later. They’re basically the RHODE Skin of spicy poultry.

Given that his restaurant has gone from a popular parking lot stall to a franchise with nearly 300 locations, Dave must have been doing something right beyond just his spice blend. Naturally, creators have played an integral role in the brand’s success.

How Is Dave's Hot Chicken Performing?

Let’s look at what six years of momentum can do for a fast-growing QSR brand, and see just how high this chicken has flown.

Dave's Hot Chicken Creator Count, 2020 - 2025

Right off the bat, the brand grew from 182 creators in 2020 to 2.8k in 2025, a 16x increase…

Dave's Hot Chicken Post Count, 2020 - 2025

…While its post volume surged from 308 posts to 6.3k posts over the same period. Notably, post growth (20x) outpaced creator growth (16x), indicating increasing creator productivity and repeated advocacy.
                                                                                               Dave's Hot Chicken EMV, 2020 - 2025

Meanwhile, Dave’s Hot Chicken scaled from a 2020 total of just $990k Earned Media Value (EMV), a metric that captures virality and buzz across conversations on social media, to $57.8M in 2025, a 58x increase. That kind of jump reflects a sustained cultural relevance that goes beyond spicy chicken’s surging popularity during this timeframe. Clearly, creators were sharing Dave’s Hot Chicken content in a way that sparked both visibility and resonance.

Dave's Hot Chicken Impressions, 2020 - 2025

The brand’s impressions climbed from 27.3M in 2020 to a clean 1B in 2025, a 37x increase. It also predicted Dave’s Hot Chicken’s eventual acquisition price, which is a neat little quirk.
                                                                                          Dave's Hot Chicken Engagements, 2020 - 2025

Engagements followed a similar trajectory, rising from 1.9M to 75.7M, a 39x improvement. Again, this suggests that Dave’s Hot Chicken was scaling both exposure and resonance, in that people were responding to this content organically, rather than just passively viewing it.

We have a pretty clear signal of where that resonance was coming from:

Dave's Hot Chicken Share of Impressions by Platform, 2025

In 2025, TikTok was responsible for roughly 77% of the brand’s impressions…

Dave's Hot Chicken Share of Engagements by Platform, 2025

…As well as 85% of its engagements.

While Instagram played an important secondary role, Dave’s Hot Chicken is, by every measurable definition, a TikTok-first brand.

That dominance is particularly important in the restaurant space, where visual virality drives foot traffic and franchise expansion. The brand’s explosive EMV growth aligns directly with its TikTok concentration, and the general proliferation of conversation about the brand.

So we know that Dave’s Hot Chicken is a certified TikTok sensation. But it still begs the question…

Who Are Dave's Hot Chicken's Creators?

1. One creator is eating more than his fair share

When it comes to tendies, feast creator @shhhhimeating is in a category of his own. With $5.7M EMV across 71 posts in 2025, he generated more than double the EMV of Dave’s Hot Chicken’s next closest creator. Plus, his output grew +109% YoY from an already-sizable base of $2.8M. Multiple individual posts from his account ranked in the top ten of the Dave’s Hot Chicken’s posts leaderboard for the year, each generating $180k–$250k EMV individually.

2. There are a wide range of food-first formats

As you would expect, Dave's Hot Chicken's creator ecosystem is heavily food-focused. But each account comes with its own distinct flavor:

• Mukbang creators
• @janemukbangs
• @sarahmukbangs
• Food reviewers
• @shawnfoodreviews7
• @kellyeatsgood
• @theangelfoodie

• Food tour and lifestyle accounts
• @thatfoodielyss
• @cocoeatz
• @serinaamadee.eats

• ASMR eating creators
• @asmrwnak
• @orianaasmr

The mukbang and food reaction formats generate particularly high engagement, with eating challenges and extreme heat content proving inherently watchable and shareable.

I also saw a meaningful presence of spicy/heat-specific creators (@hotchickenlife, Everything Spicy), who represent an organic niche audience for the brand's core product identity.

In other words, we might have really been onto something with that spicy wings podcast. Maybe we should bring it back?

3. There's a notable crossover into entertainment and pop culture

What's interesting to me beyond Dave’s Hot Chicken’s food creator base is how many non-food creators are driving meaningful EMV.

Sure, you have Matt Stonie, a competitive eating/YouTube mega-star, who generated $422k via just four posts. And Keith Lee, a food discovery creator whose stamp of approval carries enormous cultural weight, drove $286k via just three posts.

But then there are The Try Guys, entertainment and comedy creators whose audiences skew young and highly social. They authored a pair of posts that netted $97k. Even the UFC ($139k, four posts, +297% YoY) and My Mixtapez ($115k) made appearances, pointing toward cultural touchstones that align with Dave's Hot Chicken's customer base. This crossover presence suggests that Dave's Hot Chicken is showing up in broader entertainment and culture feeds, extending its reach beyond foodies.

Between all these factors, Dave’s Hot Chicken has both benefited from and directly driven the rise of the QSR creator marketing movement. It’s a symbiotic relationship: this sort of brand expansion is only possible by mastering social media, but a brand can only master social media when it has an offering that creators are sure to love.

As Dave’s Hot Chicken continues to grow, I’m betting that creators will continue to play a central role in its success. I’m also betting that I’ll be consuming a #2 combo meal in the very near future.

*All data, unless otherwise specified, stems from CreatorIQ's public-facing brand leaderboards. We will never share performance metrics from a customer's CreatorIQ profile, or any brand's private information.

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