This isn't about 
matters for this specific thread, so for the sake of diversity of responses I welcome any and all feedback about the place. I never ate there, never intend to eat there, and just by glancing at the prices they're comically high, even for a contemporary fast food restaurant.
Why the hype? Why the massive lines? Are chicken tendies from that specific location that magical? I have no fucking clue.
californians: "we have the best food in the country"
also californians: mid-tier, southern-based fast food chicken place in my neighborhood,
...
anyway, canes is ok. their angle has always been to have an extremely simplified menu. there's chicken tendies, there's fries, there's little cups of coleslaw and "texas toast". that's it. they make an in-house condiment that is like a 5-ingredient remoulade. there are like 6 combinations of those things, so in-house it's just breading/frying chicken breasts, frying pre-cut french fries, or mixing the sauce. when they've got it working, their drive through line hauls ass even compared to a fully staffed mcdonalds, which is the gold standard for the market segment. that all translates into a fast-moving, simplified inventory. also, unlike mcdonalds, canes isn't reconstituting mechanically separated chicken with starches, sodium and binders in some industrial plant in Missouri to make an endless stream of 2 cent frozen and bagged "mcnuggets" flowing all over the nation and charging people 25 cents a bite.
so i can see why maybe people who are kind of over mcdonalds might be real excited about a canes. but i don't care how fast the line moves, no chance am i sitting in my car in a line for an hour to get fast food anything. like maybe that's something the real carbrains do, because sitting in their little air conditioned petroleum chariot while listening to a Prager U lecture or a fash-adjacent country song about being a Real Man is preferable to the alternative of parking, getting up, walking, and standing in line.