n TASTE
GROWING UP, NOT SELLING OUT
Sacramento’s family-owned restaurant chains find creative ways to expand
BY Jennifer Fergesen
E
Santiago and Summer Gonzalez opened
the first Kiki’s Chicken Place in 2015. Nine
branches now exist in the greater Sacra-
mento region.
PHOTO BY NICOLETTE LOVELL
34
comstocksmag.com | October 2019
ven the founders of Kiki’s Chicken
Place, Sacramento’s latest temple to
the twin gods of tenders and wings,
are surprised by how fast their chain has
spread.
“The goal was 10 stores in 10 years,
and now we have nine in three and a
half,” says Summer Gonzalez, who start-
ed the first Kiki’s in North Sacramento
with her husband, Santiago, in Decem-
ber 2015. Today, there are nine branches,
including locations in Fair Oaks, Folsom,
Rancho Cordova, Rocklin, downtown
Sacramento and Midtown. “That’s defi-
nitely crazy growth,” she says.
Gonzalez credits several factors for
the restaurant’s surge in popularity. First,
there’s the food: chicken fried crisp and
craggy; waffles dripping bacon-flecked
maple butter; baskets of potatoes in vari-
ous forms — straight-cut, shoestring, tots
— streaked with sauces in the shades of
a sunset, from corona-orange buffalo to
crimson sweet chili. Everything is cooked
to order; no heat lamps here, no petrified
thighs drying out on the counter.
“The other factor,” says Gonzalez, “is
that we’re a family-owned business that
takes care of our community, and I think
our community wants that.” The Gon-
zalez’s success, and those of other local
family-owned chains, reveal how tech-
niques such as licensing agreements and
outside investment can help businesses
maintain the demands of growth with-
out compromising their founding values.
Family is key at Kiki’s, whose name
pays homage to the Gonzalezes’ daugh-
ter Kiana and niece Kimberly. Born in
Mexico and Hawaii, respectively, the