Dave's Hot Chicken opens its third Tampa Bay Area location — and second in Pinellas County — at 4683 Park Blvd in Pinellas Park on Thursday, August 6. The Nashville-style chain, which has grown from a $900 parking-lot pop-up to a celebrity-backed national franchise since its 2017 founding in East Hollywood, California, brings its seven-level spice program to Park Boulevard, per the brand's Instagram announcement.
The founding story is central to how Dave's markets itself: four childhood friends launched the concept with $900 in an East Hollywood parking lot in 2017. The pop-up format proved out quickly enough to support brick-and-mortar expansion, and the chain eventually drew investors including Samuel L. Jackson and Michael Strahan. That capital has funded a franchising push that now reaches Pinellas Park as the brand's second Pinellas County address.
Nashville-style hot chicken is a specific preparation — bone-in or boneless chicken coated with a cayenne-forward spice paste and fried, typically served on white bread with pickles. Dave's runs the format across seven heat tiers, from No Spice at the base through escalating levels that end at the Reaper. That top tier uses Carolina Reaper pepper and carries a heat rating of up to 2 million Scoville units — well above the habanero's peak of around 350,000 units, and at the ceiling of commercially classified hot peppers. The chain requires customers to sign a waiver before the Reaper order is placed, a policy applied consistently across locations rather than as a local novelty.
