Layne’s Chicken Fingers, hatched 30 years ago deep in the heart of Texas, will open a franchise location at 846 W. 1700 South in mid-January. Franchisee Scott Davis said it will be the first of many such restaurants in the Beehive State.

“I have one here in Texas that we’ve had open for a couple of years and I’m now shifting and going to do 15 or 16 locations in Utah over the next five years,” Davis told the Standard-Examiner.

Davis became enamored with the Layne’s chicken concept through his travels to College Station, Texas, where the business was birthed by Mike Layne and Mike Garratt in a small cinder-block building.

“My wife and her entire family are Texas A&M graduates, and that’s where Layne’s and the brand began,” Davis said. “So, I got to know it well from visiting College Station and going to football games and so forth, and it has kind of a cult following.”

While there’s no shortage of chicken options for the people who dine in north Davis and Weber counties, Layne’s differentiates itself with its hand-battered chicken fingers, which are also marinated for a minimum of 48 hours, according to Davis.

The chain also eschews the everything-but-the-kitchen-sink menus of some establishments and focuses solely on the food it does best.

“We have the luxury of … we only sell one thing,” Layne’s Chicken Fingers CEO Garrett Reed told the Standard-Examiner. “We sell chicken tenders. That’s it.”

Reed took the reins of the Layne’s brand in 2017 with the intention of growing it throughout the country. Flash forward to now, and he expects there to be 45 to 50 restaurants in operation by the end of 2025, with locations in Texas, Arkansas, Ohio, Georgia, Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Wisconsin, Arizona, Utah and Washington, D.C.

Even as the chain looks to expand its reach, though, Reed said a decidedly local approach has been an important part of its success.

“We try to have our local operators, our local owners, be native or live in that community so they understand what that community needs,” Reed said.

To that end, Davis and his wife, Heather, have become a part of the community they’re looking to serve.

“We built a house out there with the thoughts of it just kind of being a vacation home,” Davis said. “Now, we’re finding ourselves out there six months a year. And it’s probably going to be growing closer to nine months a year.”

Davis now hopes people living and working in Clearfield, at Hill Air Force Base and in the surrounding area will take to Layne’s as he has taken to Utah.

“We really want to get ingrained into the local community and be a part of it,” he said.

For more information, go to https://www.layneschickenfingers.com/.