FAIRFIELD, CT — Haven Hot Chicken, the Connecticut-based chicken restaurant with spicy Nashville-style chicken, held a ribbon-cutting Thursday at its Fairfield store, the chain’s ninth location in the state.
The restaurant serves fried chicken – and “no chicken” – in five different levels of spiciness: Country (no spices); Mild (a touch spicy); Medium (really spicy); Hot (burns) and Haven (for hotheads).
“We have something for everyone,” co-founder and CEO Etkin Tekin told Patch, adding that Country and Mild are Haven Hot Chicken’s most popular flavors.
“From there, it gets spicy quickly,” Tekin said. “The Hot and Haven levels are for people who really love authentic, spicy food.”
Bill Gerber, First Selectman and present at the ceremonial opening, can confirm the sharpness.
“I had one of their sandwiches and I have to say it was the best chicken sandwich I’ve ever had,” Gerber said, adding that he would recommend customers start with the mild level.
“I had the medium and I was sweating,” he said, laughing.
According to co-founder and president Jason Sobocinski, the chain employs 170 people and was recently named one of the 5,000 fastest-growing companies in the country by Inc. Magazine.
In addition to Fairfield, the chain also has stores in New Haven, Middletown, Newington, North Haven, Norwalk, Orange, Oxford and Storrs. The company plans to double in size by 2025 with the opening of several more stores, including the possibility of stores in the neighboring states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New York.
Tekin and Sobocinski, along with Rob LaTronica and Craig Sklar, founded Haven Hot Chicken after Tekin and Sobocinski went to Nashville for a conference and fell in love with Music City’s famous hot chicken.
“We couldn’t find anything similar anywhere in Connecticut, which prompted us to open it here,” Tekin said, adding that they started as a pop-up shop in 2019 and opened the first location, a takeout shop in New Haven, the following year during the pandemic.
However, just as important as selling chicken dishes is helping to provide meals to people affected by food insecurity, Sobocinski said.
As part of its “Great Banana Pudding Drive,” Haven Hot Chicken is donating the cost of a meal to CT FoodShare for every banana pudding dessert the chain sells.
On Thursday, Sobocinski and Tekin presented CT FoodShare with a donation check from the campaign in the amount of $5,825.
“We were able to donate 106,000 meals through the pudding campaign,” said Sobocinski. “We are very proud of that because food is a right, not a privilege.”
Tekin said that in addition to philanthropy, Haven Hot Chicken is committed to developing its employees into leaders.
“We don’t just want to create jobs, we want to create careers,” Tekin said, adding that more than 20 employees have moved from hourly workers to management positions in the company.
“For me, this is a big deal,” Tekin said, recalling previous jobs in his life where he felt unfulfilled. “We want people to learn skills and grow in our organization.”
