A long line snakes out of a small strip mall in East Hollywood. The aroma of honey, spices and savory fried chicken is thick in the air. You can feel the excitement, the smell of curiosity is as present as the smell of cayenne. People have waited in L.A. traffic and a minimum 15 minute long line just to try Dave’s Hot Chicken.
Dozens of people wait patiently impatiently to take a bite out of the famous spicy chicken sandwiches from Dave’s Hot Chicken.
You finally get to the front of the line, you’re worried about your parking meter expiring, your stomach is rumbling because you’ve been fasting all day for this.
You finally hear your number called, and you subtly speed walk to the counter and finally pick up your food. When you take your first bite of the sandwich, the hot chicken skin is perfectly crispy, the bread is warm and toasted, their “special” sauce is slathered onto the bottom bun, and it of course comes with a pickle. All of the flavors balance each other, nothing is too overpowering.
Yet, even with cayenne seasoning stained red hands, many are still able to wipe off their hands just enough to grip their phones and take a photo of their meal. Thanks to the loyalty of such patrons, @DavesHotChicken has 93,000 followers, and rows and rows of mouthwatering photos of their food to scroll through. While some brands go for minimalistic photos and colors, Dave’s Instagram is red hot. The pictures are up close and personal, the buns are glowing, the chicken is fiery and the fries are golden.
Even celebrities, like makeup vlogger Bretman Rock and actress Shay Mitchell, have participated in the food porn patronage of posting pictures and mukbangs (which is a Youtube trend where people eat large amounts of food in front of their cameras) of them eating Dave’s hot chicken, just like hundreds of thousands of hungry hot chicken fans.
Dave’s Hot Chicken is one of the O.G. hot chicken restaurants in L.A., reigning over its hot chicken empire from the corner of Western Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard thanks in part to its photogenic appeal on Instagram and the explosion of the Nashville hot chicken trend, which took Los Angeles by storm in 2017 but the food isn’t just instagrammably good, it really is good.
You may ask, “Can a piece of chicken really be that amazing?” The answer is yes, it surely can.
The men behind this hot chicken perfection are first-generation Armenian-American business partners Arman Oganesyan and David “Dave” (yes, the Dave in Dave’s Hot Chicken) Kopushyan. They’ve been best friends for over a decade and met at a mutual friend's birthday party. They never expected to own a restaurant that would become an iconic L.A. hot spot. It was also a bit of a shock to the L.A. Armenian community that two Armenian-Americans owned a Nashville hot chicken-style restaurant (more on that later).
They decided they wanted to make a hot chicken restaurant after they ate at another infamous hot chicken spot, Howlin’ Rays. Kopushyan ate their food and instantly loved it, but wanted to be able to create his own version. Oganesyan also immediately recognized there was a gap in the market for more hot chicken sandwiches.
Kopushyan, spent hours and months trying to perfect the recipe to their famous hot chicken sandwich. He and Oganesyan worked together in their kitchen for over 6 months sampling and tasting their recipe to make sure it was absolutely perfect.
“I was a chef, and worked in a lot of restaurants,” said Kopusyan. “I’ve always been very passionate about food and perfecting how to make it. I would clock out of my shift and stay hours after it ended just to make sure that I was the best chef in the restaurant.”
Oganesyan, who is now 27 years old, is in control of all the business aspects of the restaurants. Though he never went to business school, or even graduated high school, he taught himself how to be a restaurateur from scratch and understands the importance of business and marketing.
“You can have an idea and be good at marketing, but if you don’t have the good food then it’s not going to work,” he said. “Or you can be a good chef and have good food, but if you don’t have good marketing then it’s not going to work. You have to have both. Dave had the food smarts, and I had the insight of knowing how to make it into a business.”
After they opened their East Hollywood location , Dave’s took off quickly, but no one knew much about the creators. It was surprising to much of the Armenian community.
Growing up in a predominantly Armenian-American community, I know when Armenians open up a small business, they typically tell the community first, because Armenians will always come out to support any Armenian owned business. (There’s even an Armenian version of the Yellow Pages if you look online. http://www.armenianyellowpages.us/)
Dave’s is not immediately associated with the Armenian community in L.A., and after speaking to Oganesyan and Kopushyan I found out this was no accident.
“Anything Armenians do gets famous within the community before it gets famous anywhere else” said Oganesyan. “How do we prevent that from happening? When we opened Dave’s in the beginning we didn’t advertise to Armenians at all. We didn’t advertise to our own personal followers at all. We tried to get people off the street to come in. We tried to build the name around the general public. The way Armenians even started to come in is by hearing it from other people. Once you get that image of being an Armenian business, it is very, very, very difficult to get rid of it. Everything that is famous amongst Americans will translate to being famous within Armenians. But, being famous amongst Armenians does not mean that you will be famous amongst Americans.”
Kopushyan and Oganesyan told me how much they are grateful for Armenian culture and community, but they just didn’t want to get pigeonholed as being an Armenian restaurant. Instead, they embraced a thoroughly American comfort food to sell — hot chicken which has its roots in Nashville and Southern cooking — and leaned on a very modern way of getting word about their restaurant out: Instagram.
Kopushyan and Oganesyan also explained how social media has assisted their restaurant in being so successful. They’ve never had to pay any “influencer” or traditional marketer because the quality speaks for itself. Especially with foodie culture, since their food is so instagrammable, they don’t need people to come in and take professional photos of their food , their customers do it for them.
But what might be another secret to Oganesyan and Kopushyan’s success — aside from their phenomenal and highly photogenic chicken — the cosmic power of the number 3.
“The address to both locations of the address add up to a number divisible by three, the ingredient measurements are all in multiples of three,” said Oganesyan.
Oganesyan and Kopushyan both created their version of the American Dream through intuition and perseverance. They noticed a growing trend, and decided to dedicate their lives to creating a quality product.
Yet, what differentiates Dave’s Hot Chicken is the obvious love and affection put into the food here. If Nashville calls hot chicken soul food, then the Armenian version would be հոկի which means spirit and soul.