Arman Oganesyan Links Dave's Hot Chicken Founder Story To X-Men 97 Franchise Campaign

Dave's Hot Chicken is using a Marvel Animation tie-in to turn a July menu offer into a broader franchise brand story, with co-founder and chief brand officer Arman Oganesyan placed at the centre of the message.

The Los Angeles-based hot chicken chain announced on June 29 that it is teaming with Marvel Animation's X-Men 97 for a limited-time collectible meal beginning July 1. The offer pairs a Dave's #4 Meal with a blind-bag figurine featuring Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm or Jean Grey. The company also said fans can unlock limited-edition pins and comic content through the Dave's Hot Chicken app while supplies last.

For franchise operators, the important point is not simply the licensed promotion. The announcement shows how Dave's is using founder identity, pop-culture affinity and app-based engagement to support a system that has grown far beyond its East Hollywood origin story.

Oganesyan said in the announcement that Dave's was built by people who were genuinely passionate about food, music, sports and pop culture. He connected the X-Men 97 promotion to his own childhood attachment to the series, particularly Wolverine. That founder-led framing gives the campaign a more specific voice than a routine quick-service restaurant cross-promotion.

Dave's has been careful for several years to keep its origin story in the foreground. The company again repeated that Chef Dave Kopushyan, Oganesyan and Tommy Rubenyan scraped together $900 in 2017 to launch the brand from a parking lot with portable fryers and folding tables. It also noted that the team opened a brick-and-mortar East Hollywood restaurant soon after, with support from Tommy's brother Gary, before striking a 2019 franchising deal with Wetzel's Pretzels co-founder and former chief executive Bill Phelps.

That history matters because Dave's is now operating at a very different scale. The company says it has sold rights to more than 1,500 franchise locations across the United States, Middle East, Europe and Canada, and that it expects to open more than 150 locations this year. A chain at that scale has to sell more than heat level and novelty. It has to give franchisees repeatable brand energy, marketing calendars and digital hooks that can pull customers into restaurants without weakening the core concept.

The X-Men 97 meal appears designed to do several jobs at once. It gives operators a timed July traffic driver. It lets the brand reach fans who may not already be regular Dave's customers. It also uses the company's app to extend the offer beyond an in-store meal, which matters as restaurant franchise systems continue to compete for owned customer data and repeat digital engagement.

Chief executive Jim Bitticks described the collaboration as a way to bring fans together through food, collectibles and shared experience. In franchise terms, that is a reminder that limited-time offers are becoming less about a single product and more about systemwide activation.

The risk is execution. Franchisees need consistent supply, clear merchandising and crew training if a collectible promotion is to drive traffic rather than create disappointment. Blind-bag demand can also move unevenly across markets, especially where the brand's customer base includes both food fans and collectors.

Still, the announcement gives Dave's franchise network a campaign that ties directly back to the people who built the brand. That founder connection is the difference between a licensed meal and a story franchisees can repeat locally: a small parking-lot concept that now has enough cultural pull to share a national campaign with one of entertainment's better-known animated franchises.

"That founder connection is the difference between a licensed meal and a story franchisees can repeat locally."