Business

Spirit is offering voluntary exit packages to staff to cut spending.
The airline also paused pilot and flight attendant training to cut costs.
Spirit is facing weak off-peak demand and aircraft groundings due to a Pratt & Whitney engine manufacturing issue.

A Spirit Airlines plane takes off at Los Angeles International Airport in Los Angeles, June 1, 2023.
Mario Tama | Getty Images

Spirit Airlines is offering voluntary exit packages to salaried employees, the budget carrier’s latest cost-cutting measure as it expects financial strains to continue next year.
The airline has been facing weak off-peak demand and last month said it will have to ground an average of 26 Airbus A320neo aircraft for inspections of engines made by RTX unit Pratt & Whitney after that company disclosed a manufacturing defect in August, straining its capacity.

“The last few months have been a testament to our resilience and dedication as a company, but we must return to profitability, which will require a series of tough decisions,” CEO Ted Christie said in a staff memo on Wednesday, which was seen by CNBC.
The airline had already paused training for new pilots and flight attendants, CNBC reported last month. It has also restricted expense budgets and tweaked its network, including a plan to exit Denver.
“Now, we’re taking the next difficult step – enacting an Early Voluntary Out program for salaried Team Members,” Christie wrote in the memo. The company had a similar plan during the height of Covid pandemic. “Based on the success of that plan, we’re implementing a similar set of opportunities to help us right-size our organization for our current fleet and business constraints.”
JetBlue Airways is in the process of trying to acquire Spirit, a deal the Justice Department has already sued to block with a trial that’s set to wrap up in the coming days in Boston.
The Wall Street Journal reported the Spirit Airlines buyouts earlier Wednesday More

Disney CEO Bob Iger says his number one priority the company’s film studio.
Iger admitted to a number of causes for Disney’s fall from theatrical grace.
Iger said that there has to be a reason “beyond commerce” to make sequels to a hit movie.

NYT Columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin and C.E.O. of The Walt Disney Company Bob Iger speak during the New York Times annual DealBook summit on November 29, 2023 in New York City. 
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images

One year after returning to the helm of Disney, Bob Iger said Wednesday his top priority at the company is revitalizing its film studio after a string of box office disappointments including “The Marvels” and “Wish.”
Iger admitted to a number of causes for Disney’s recent fall from theatrical grace, noting that during Covid lockdowns the company conditioned audiences to expect its films on streaming.

“The experience of accessing [the films] and watching them in the home is better than it ever was,” he told Andrew Ross Sorkin at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit. “And [it’s] a bargain when you think about it. Streaming Disney+ you can get for $7 a month. That’s a lot cheaper than taking your whole family to a film. So, I think the bar is now raised in terms of quality about what gets people out of their homes, into movie theaters.”
Quality has been an issue for Disney since it launched its streaming service in late 2019. In increasing its output to feed Disney+, Iger said the company “diluted” its quality, particularly when it came to its Marvel Cinematic Universe features. He said pandemic-related restrictions made it difficult for executives to oversee its increased number of film and television productions.
“‘The Marvels’ was shot during Covid,” he explained. “There wasn’t as much supervision on the set, so to speak, where we have executives [that are] really looking over what’s being done day after day after day.”
Iger stepped down as CEO in early 2020, handing the reins to Bob Chapek, but he stayed on as executive chairman to oversee creative output through the end of 2021. Iger returned as CEO a year ago as the board fired Chapek.

Iger also defended Disney’s theatrical output, suggesting it was a victim of its own success after having dominated the film business for a decade before Covid.

“And I’m not sure another studio will ever achieve some of the numbers that we achieved. I mean, we got to the point where if a film didn’t do a billion dollars in global box office, we were disappointed,” he said. “That’s an unbelievably high standard and I think we have to get more realistic.”
In 2019, Disney was responsible for seven of the nine movies that grossed more than $1 billion globally. However, it’s struggled to connect with audiences since. Aside from last year’s “Avatar: The Way of Water,” acquired as part of Disney’s $71 billion deal for the majority of 21st Century Fox, Disney hasn’t had a movie gross $1 billion since the last Star Wars movie in 2019.
Since then, it’s come close with 2023’s “Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3,” which tallied nearly $900 million at the global box office as well as 2022 titles “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” ($955 million), “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever ($859 million) and “Thor: Love and Thunder” ($760 million).
Yet, other big-budget franchise films have flopped. 2023’s “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” generated $378 million globally, “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” secured $476 million worldwide, low for a Marvel film, and Pixar’s “Lightyear” collected less than $250 million globally in 2022.
Iger also reiterated comments he’s made before about the need for Disney to be more selective about which Marvel superheroes get sequel films and when to bring in fresh stories.
“I don’t want to apologize for making sequels,” Iger said, talking broadly about all of Disney’s properties. “Some of them have done extraordinarily well and they’ve been good films, too. I think you there has to be a reason to make them, you have to have a good story. And often the story doesn’t hold up to is not as strong as the original story. That can be a problem.”
Iger said that there has to be a reason “beyond commerce” to make a follow-up film to a hit, noting that over the last past few years Disney has “made too many.”
“It doesn’t mean we’re not going to continue to make them,” he added. “We’re making a number of them now right as a matter of fact. But we will only greenlight a sequel if we believe the story that the creators want to tell is worth telling.”
Next year, Disney plans to release “Deadpool 3,” “Inside Out 2” and “Mufasa: The Lion King.”
Disclosure: Andrew Ross Sorkin co-hosts “Squawk Box” on CNBC. More

Shares of Cigna and Humana slid after a report that the two health-care giants are in talks to merge.
The nation’s two largest health insurers are discussing a stock-and-cash deal that could be finalized by the end of this year, according to the report from The Wall Street Journal.
A Cigna spokesperson did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment, while a Humana spokesperson declined to comment.

The Cigna Group headquarters in Bloomfield, Connecticut, on Oct. 27, 2023.
BlooJoe Buglewicz | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Shares of Cigna and Humana slid Wednesday after a report that the two health-care giants are in talks to merge.
A Cigna spokesperson did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the report from The Wall Street Journal, which cited people familiar with the matter. A Humana spokesperson declined to comment.

The companies are discussing a stock-and-cash deal that could be finalized by the end of this year, the people told the Journal. 
A merger would be a mega deal. Cigna’s market value sat at roughly $77 billion on Wednesday and Humana’s was nearly $60 billion, making them two of the nation’s largest health insurers.
Shares of Cigna closed 8% lower Wednesday, while Humana’s stock closed more than 5% lower.
The rumored deal comes after reports earlier this month that Cigna was exploring a sale of its Medicare Advantage business, which manages government health insurance for people age 65 and older. A Cigna spokesperson at the time said the company does not comment on “rumors or speculation.” 
Some analysts have suggested that a potential combination with Humana could be a reason for Cigna to offload its Medicare Advantage business. Doing away with that business could potentially temper antitrust concerns for such a merger, Scott Fidel, health care stock analyst at Stephens, wrote in a note earlier this month, according to STAT News. 

“We would see this action being one component of a potential pursuit of Humana as an acquisition target, with the divestiture being a proactive move to reduce antitrust risk,” Fidel said.Don’t miss these stories from CNBC PRO: More

Miriam Adelson and her family are buying a majority stake in the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks from Mark Cuban.
Adelson and her casino company, Las Vegas Sands, have spent millions in Texas to push for broader legalization of gambling.
Cuban, a proponent of legalized gambling, said last year he was interested in partnering with Sands.

Dr. Miriam Adelson speaks onstage during the 24th annual Keep Memory Alive ‘Power of Love Gala’ benefit for the Cleveland Clinic Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health at MGM Grand Garden Arena on March 07, 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Photo by Denise Truscello/Getty Images for Keep Memory Alive)
Denise Truscello | Getty Images

News that Miriam Adelson and her family would sell $2 billion in Las Vegas Sands stock to buy a majority stake in the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks stunned the sports and gambling worlds alike.
After all, Las Vegas is the headquarters of the family’s empire, even if it doesn’t have any casino resorts in the city anymore. Adelson is the widow of Las Vegas Sands founder Sheldon Adelson, who died in January 2021.

And Las Vegas is now a preeminent destination for sports, with the NHL’s Golden Knights, the NFL’s Raiders, the WNBA’s Aces and a Formula 1 Grand Prix. Soon, Major League Baseball’s As are expected to relocate to the desert from Oakland.
Likewise, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has suggested it’s a matter of when, not if, Vegas gets a team. LeBron James has said he’s interested in bringing basketball to Vegas at some point. Retired NBA legend and former Sacramento Kings minority owner Shaquille O’Neal has also expressed interest in a Vegas team. The city is also set to host the final games of the NBA’s midseason tournament.
An NBA team in Vegas could command a price tag in the $6 billion to $7 billion range, according to Patrick Rishe, director of the sports business program at Washington University in St. Louis.
So why is Adelson and her family throwing billions into a Dallas team?
In a statement to CNBC, they said: “The Adelson and Dumont families are honored to have the opportunity to be stewards of this great franchise. Through our commitment and additional investment in the team, we look forward to partnering with Mark Cuban to build on the team’s success and legacy in Dallas and beyond.”

Patrick Dumont is married to Miriam Adelson’s daughter, Sivan. He is also the president and chief operating officer of Las Vegas Sands.
The Adelsons have already invested millions into political contributions and lobbying in Texas, trying to coax lawmakers into more broadly legalizing gambling in the state. Las Vegas Sands itself has spent years and millions of dollars as well in pursuit of the same goal.
The company sold the Venetian, Palazzo and the Venetian Expo center in early 2022 to affiliates of Apollo Global Management and VICI Properties, raising more than $6 billion. The company has said it intends to use that capital to pursue gaming licenses elsewhere.
Late last year, Mavericks owner Cuban said he was interested in partnering with Sands to build a development that would include a new arena and a casino resort if the state more broadly legalized gambling.

A detailed view of the Dallas Mavericks logo on the court during the fourth quarter in Game Four of the 2022 NBA Playoffs Western Conference Finals between the Golden State Warriors and the Dallas Mavericks at American Airlines Center on May 24, 2022 in Dallas, Texas.
Ron Jenkins  | Getty Images

It didn’t, and the campaign is still in limbo. State lawmakers failed to push forward legislation that would bring it to Texas voters as an option on the ballot. It’s unlikely they’ll take another stab at it until the legislative session in 2025.
“When you think of all the places you want to save up to vacation, Texas isn’t one of them,” Cuban said earlier this month, according to The Dallas Morning News. “There’s no real destination that you save up for. That’s a problem and I think resort gaming would have a huge impact.”
Owning a team in Dallas will strengthen the Adelsons’ ties to Texas. Possibly, they would gain both a carrot and a stick to get local support for a casino license by wielding power and influence over the future of the Mavericks. A company insider told CNBC that it’s just smart to strengthen community ties.
It’s a similar strategy that Las Vegas Sands has deployed to secure one of three new casino licenses to be awarded in New York.
The company has invested millions of dollars and many years of lobbying efforts to woo government and community leaders in Long Island’s Nassau County. And the company has committed to redeveloping the Nassau Coliseum into a destination mixed-use resort, regardless of whether it wins a license. But the size of its investment presumably would depend on whether it can offer casino gambling.
Adelson stands to benefit mightily if the bets on eventual casino licenses in New York and Texas pay off. She and her family will continue to own more than 50% of Las Vegas Sands stock.
There’s still a great chance the Mavericks investment could pay off for the Adelsons, even without a gambling business in Texas.
“It’s a very smart family, and sports assets have performed great,” said Jason Ader, a former Las Vegas Sands board member who runs SpringOwl Asset Management. “NBA teams are marquis assets that are likely to continue to appreciate.”
Cuban bought his stake in the Mavericks for $285 million in 2000. Forbes recently valued the team at $4.5 billion, the seventh-highest value in the NBA. The team won the NBA title in 2011. It currently features superstars Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving.
CNBC has reached out to Cuban for comment. The NBA has not commented, and the Mavericks referred questions to the Adelsons.
–CNBC’s Jessica Golden contributed to this article. More

Netflix on Wednesday announced three “Grand Theft Auto” titles will join the company’s mobile game library, available for subscribers to play next month.
It’s a big get for Netflix, as “Grand Theft Auto” is one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time.
It’s unclear if the new releases will drive subscriber growth.

Grand Theft Auto V packaging and the Netflix logo are displayed on a phone screen in this photo taken in Krakow, Poland, on Oct. 18, 2023.
Nurphoto | Getty Images

Netflix announced Wednesday that it will make three “Grand Theft Auto” titles available to play for subscribers next month.
Rockstar Games’ “Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition” will launch Dec. 14 on the Apple App Store, Google Play and in the Netflix mobile app, the streaming media company said in a blog post. The release will include “Grand Theft Auto III – The Definitive Edition,” “Grand Theft Auto: Vice City – The Definitive Edition” and “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas – The Definitive Edition.”

Subscribers will not need a controller to play the mobile release, like most of Netflix’s 80-game library. Rockstar Games originally released “Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy – The Definitive Edition” for consoles and PC platforms in November 2021.

Courtesy of Netflix

The games are a big get for Netflix, as its mobile games lag behind other publishers in downloads. “Grand Theft Auto” is one of the best-selling video game franchises of all time, shipping more than 405 million units worldwide, according to data firm Statista.
It’s not the first time Netflix has gotten its hands on a big-name franchise. Netflix released “Sonic Prime Dash” earlier this year for mobile platforms. The title is based on Sega’s “Sonic the Hedgehog,” which is the gaming company’s best-selling franchise, according to Statista.
It’s unclear if licensing another popular franchise will lead to more subscribers downloading the games — or if the releases will attract new Netflix subscribers.
“Netflix’s addition of GTA is by far its most promising game launch and shows Netflix is getting more serious about gaming,” said Insider Intelligence analyst Ross Benes. But the mobile platform may limit gameplay, he added.

“Playing ‘Vice City’ or ‘San Andreas’ on your phone is a cool feature for existing subscribers,” but don’t expect new subscribers to sign up just to “access a game they’re probably already familiar with so that they can play it in an inferior format.”
The company has started testing games on larger-screen devices, Netflix said in August. The beta test requires gamers to use their phone as a controller when playing on the TV.
It has been two years since Netflix announced its push into gaming, and the efforts have puzzled Wall Street and industry experts alike. The streaming giant has outwardly maintained a rosy outlook for its gaming efforts, despite recent download data that implied less than 1% of subscribers played a Netflix game on a daily basis.
Netflix’s gaming trajectory is not different from what the gaming company has seen when launching other new initiatives, Netflix co-CEO Greg Peters said on the company’s third-quarter earnings call last month.
“When we’ve launched a new region — or when we launched new genres, like unscripted” we had to “crawl, walk, run, but we see a tremendous amount of opportunity to build a long-term center value of entertainment,” Peters said.Don’t miss these stories from CNBC PRO: More

Every May tens of thousands of the faithful flock to Omaha, Nebraska, hometown of Berkshire Hathaway, to bask in the presence of the investment firm’s two leaders: Warren Buffett, known for his folksy genius, and Charlie Munger, for his killer zingers. But for the truly hard core, for many years a more cloistered gathering took place near Schumpeter’s current abode in Pasadena, a lush city on the edge of Los Angeles. At the Pasadena Convention Centre, Mr Munger alone would hold forth, his dry wit in full flow. Recording devices were not allowed, but notetakers scribbled furiously as they tried to keep up.The last one took place in 2011, when Mr Munger, who died in an LA hospital on November 28th aged 99, was a sprightly 87-year-old. It was his last shareholder meeting as head of Wesco, a financial conglomerate about to be wholly swallowed up by Berkshire, and hence the end of his one-man show. He spoke for three hours. As usual, he poked gentle fun at the audience, telling them, “You folks need to find a new cult hero.” Yet he clearly enjoyed delivering what one scribe called his sermon from the “Church of Rationality”. He beamed when they gave him a standing ovation.Looking back through notes of that meeting, the themes he dwelt on seem random. He discussed what he felt was his inadequate legacy, though he took pride in attributes such as basic morality, self-discipline and objectivity. He advised rich parents how to look after their children (don’t try to motivate them with artificial hardships, he said, because they will inevitably hate you for it). He discussed the importance of being rational amid mistaken biases (which he called the “Lollapalooza effect”). He even put in a good word for The Economist, describing it, according to one notetaker, as his favourite “adult magazine”.And yet those were not scattershot thoughts. They echoed a carefully thought out worldview on life, investment and business culture that he expounded on extensively in writings and speaking engagements whenever he was not in the spotlight as the Sage of Omaha’s curmudgeonly sidekick. As Mr Buffett put it, Mr Munger influenced Berkshire’s entire investment philosophy by introducing the wisdom that it is “better to buy a good business at a fair price than a fair business at a good price”. In other words, he deserves a big share of the credit for turning the financial conglomerate into the $785bn powerhouse that it has become.Though the two men bore an uncanny physical resemblance (Munger, at least later in life, was more portly), intellectually they had different strengths. Mr Buffett is a master of the plain and simple; Mr Munger was a complex thinker (“Charlie does the talking, I just move my lips,” Mr Buffett once quipped). Like the best duos—think Bill Gates and Paul Allen at Microsoft, Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris at the New York Yankees, and John Lennon and Paul McCartney in The Beatles—their strengths complemented each other, producing something almost magical. In the case of Messrs Buffett and Munger the magic lasted for 60 years. During that time they famously never had a row.As with many successful partnerships, they shared common roots. Like Mr Buffett, Mr Munger grew up in Omaha. As teenagers both worked in the Buffett family store at different times. They met in Omaha in 1959, not long after Mr Buffett, then owner of a fledgling investment firm, had been told by a potential client that he resembled the erudite Mr Munger, who was six years his senior. Mr Munger came to replace Benjamin Graham, a legendary “value“ investor, as Mr Buffett’s sounding board, with four qualities that Janet Lowe, his biographer, said resembled Graham’s. He was honest, realistic, profoundly curious and unfettered by conventional thinking. Those are as good traits as any to summarise his approach to business.In terms of honesty, he put the trustworthiness of business leaders, and the soundness of their accounts, above all else. He hated gimmickry (the accounting term EBITDA, he said, should be substituted with “bullshit earnings”). He was openly scornful of the “megalomania” of some investment bankers, whom he blamed for the financial crisis of 2007-09. In a deft parody penned in 2011 he described the perpetrators as Wantmore, Tweakmore, Totalscum and Countwrong. America was Boneheadia.As for realism, he was no softy when it came to business. He believed in “moats” that safeguarded firms’ brand value, pricing power and scale. Take Wrigley’s Chewing Gum versus a cheaper competitor, for instance. “Am I going to take something I don’t know and put it in my mouth—which is a pretty personal place, after all—for a lousy dime?” Handle new technologies with care, he preached. Know your “circle of competence”. Don’t rush into new ventures you don’t understand.For him, curiosity was a lifelong project, and he believed that business people should constantly refresh their knowledge, challenging their assumptions and learning from mistakes more than successes. As he said on the first page of “Poor Charlie’s Almanack”, a compilation of his writings and speeches: “Acquire worldly wisdom and adjust your behaviour accordingly. If your new behaviour gives you a little temporary unpopularity with your peer group…then to hell with them.”Invert, always invertFinally, think unconventionally. Don’t follow the herd. He loved Confucius and boldly encouraged America to “get along with China” despite the current tensions. Apple, he said, was an example of how engaging with China was both good for business and good for China. Everything that worked in the opposite direction, he said earlier this year, was “stupid, stupid, stupid”. Even by Mr Munger’s standards, that was blunt; he normally expressed himself with humour, not exasperation. But it summed up what was probably his greatest contribution to business thinking. He was a paragon of that old-style virtue—common sense. ■Read more from Schumpeter, our columnist on global business:The many contradictions of Sam Altman (Nov 22nd)How to think about the Google anti-monopoly trial (Nov 15th)The Bob Iger v Nelson Peltz rematch (Nov 9th)Also: If you want to write directly to Schumpeter, email him at [email protected]. And here is an explanation of how the Schumpeter column got its name. More

Cities of Success

“Cities of Success” special featuring Nashville will air on CNBC on December 6 at 10pm ET

Nashville is seeing an unprecedented surge in luxury hotels, with renowned brands such as the Four Seasons Hotel, the W Hotel and the Grand Hyatt opening their doors in Music City.
More than 90 new hotels have been constructed in Nashville since 2013, contributing more than 14,000 rooms to the city’s accommodation offerings, according to the Nashville Chamber of Commerce. In the past year alone, hotel expansion has generated more than $2 billion in revenue.

“This is a great city and, for the most part, very pro-growth and pro-development,” real estate developer Dean Stratouly told CNBC.
Read more: Nashville hot chicken is everywhere, but it’s still at the heart of its hometown’s culture
“That’s something that you don’t find everywhere. You then layer in all the things that are really cool about Nashville: Broadway, music, [the NFL’s Tennessee] Titans. And all of that put together makes Nashville just a great place to come,” he said.

The exterior of the Four Seasons Hotel and Private Residences in Nashville.

Stratouly is one of the key figures behind a new Four Seasons Luxury Hotel in Nashville. The hotel boasts 235 rooms across a 40-story glass tower, including a 2,200 square foot penthouse suite with a hefty price tag of $10,000 or more per night.
And he’s not alone in moving in.

In 2020, Hyatt opened the Grand Hyatt Nashville, a 591-room hotel situated in a 25-floor tower, with amenities such as a rooftop bar, outdoor pool deck and more than 7,000 square meters of meeting and events space.

The Grand Hyatt Nashville pool.
Grand Hyatt

In 2021, W Nashville opened in the Gulch neighborhood, with 286 rooms and 60 suites in a 14-story mirrored tower, providing a 360-degree view.
A $585 million Ritz-Carlton project was originally set to break ground in Nashville’s SoBro district in late 2022 but has reportedly faced construction delays due to a developer dispute and a $10 million lawsuit.
While luxury hotels break ground, Nashville is struggling to keep up, according to Stratouly.
As construction of the Four Seasons project progressed and designs were finalized, it became apparent that no local laundry service could accommodate the hotel’s daily load of 3,000 pounds of linens. The solution was to outsource the hotel’s linens to Alabama, requiring a daily round-trip journey of over four hours by truck, Stratouly said.
What’s more, during construction of the hotel, Stratouly said the team faced a serious shortage of skilled labor and building inspectors in Nashville.
“The problem they are having is a product of their success,” he said. “They can’t move concepts through as fast as the market is asking them to push it through.”
City officials acknowledged the ongoing challenge of maintaining sufficient staffing and funding for permit reviews and inspections. Will Dodd, public information officer for the Nashville department of codes and building safety, told CNBC the office is working to secure staff and decrease inspection times.
At the heart of the hotel demand surge is the Music City Center, a 2 million square foot convention center that CEO Charles Starks says has ignited a need for new accommodations.
On the center’s opening day in 2013, there were already 125 large events pre-booked, with attendees reserving more than one million hotel rooms through 2024, Starks said.
“We’re seeing somewhere around about half a billion dollars a year of direct economic impact,” said Starks.
TUNE IN: The “Cities of Success” special featuring Nashville will air on CNBC on Dec. 6 at 10 p.m. ET/PT. More

Cities of Success

“Cities of Success” special featuring Nashville will air on CNBC on December 6 at 10pm ET

Nashville hot chicken reputedly traces its origins back to a family in the city who added some spice and other flavors to their fried chicken.
In recent years, the chicken specialty has spread rapidly across the country, with even large fast-food companies adding the dish to their menu.
Local restaurants say the boom has attracted more tourists to their original hot chicken, but nothing competes with what they’ve been creating for generations.

Prince’s Hot Chicken
Courtesy: Prince’s Hot Chicken

Nashville hot chicken had its humble beginnings nearly a century ago. Now, the specialty chicken style is a national phenomenon.
The Tennessee city has numerous hot chicken restaurants competing for the top spot, as both locals and tourists flock to get a taste of the dish. At the same time, large fast-food companies such as KFC, Baja Fresh, Dave’s Hot Chicken and more are increasingly featuring Nashville hot chicken on their menus.

According to data from Technomic, a food service research and consulting firm, the Nashville hot chicken trend saw a boost at the onset of the pandemic, with a peak at the end of 2022.
From the first quarter of 2020 to the second quarter of that same year, Nashville hot chicken menu mentions saw a nearly 25% increase. It’s an even bigger increase over the past five years: 65.7%.

The Nashville hot chicken origin story

But Nashville hot chicken isn’t just a spicy new trend.
The origins of the dish are unofficially traced back to the kitchen of Thornton Prince in the 1930s, according to his great-great niece, Semone Jeffries, the CEO of Prince’s Hot Chicken in Nashville.
Read more: Luxury hotels move into Nashville as demand for rooms surges

As the story goes, Prince’s scorned lover wanted to teach him a lesson after a suspicious night out — and that lesson manifested in what the restaurant likes to call a “devilish” amount of spices and flavor atop a delicately fried chicken.
That recipe was soon perfected and transformed into a Nashville classic, becoming central to local Black residents’ lives, Jeffries said. The chicken is covered in a blend of spices, topped with pickles and served with fries atop a toasted slice of bread.

Owner Andre Prince of Prince’s Hot Chicken
Courtesy: Prince’s Hot Chicken

Though the city has changed a lot since Thornton Prince’s first hot chicken, Prince’s has remained one of the city’s classic treasures.
“What makes our hot chicken the most interesting is because of the care we put into it. We do not do things haphazardly. We cook almost to order, and we don’t usually use warmers,” Jeffries, whose mother currently owns the restaurant, told CNBC. “Everything is intentional.”
After Prince’s success took off, other local chefs in the city began starting their own hot chicken restaurants and food trucks as the dish became one of the city’s trademarks.
According to food trends expert Kara Nielsen, the Nashville hot chicken trend is a “controversial topic” because of how it’s been appropriated from its origins as a Black-owned local business. Though it began going mainstream about eight years ago, Nielsen said, Nashville boasted Prince’s Hot Chicken for decades before the broader culture picked it up.
“In the last few years, a lot of foods that perhaps come from certain communities have been appropriated by mass pop culture, without proper recognition, and then other people leverage it and make money, and the people who started it aren’t getting enough credit,” Nielsen said. “So I think this is also an interesting story of appropriation from Black culture, which is why it gets very delicate.”

‘You’ve got to do it for the culture’

Nielsen credits the explosion in hot chicken’s popularity to a confluence of millennials looking for something bigger and bolder with their fried chicken and restaurants’ need to create buzz coming out of the financial crisis and recession over a decade ago.
Now, Nielsen said, Nashville hot chicken is just part of the “choice set.” She doesn’t see it going out of fashion while it still has its novelty, but she’s sure some other new flavor will overtake its popularity soon.
“People just sort of keep moving along,” Nielsen said. “So if it’s not part of your heritage, or it’s not something you ate every year for Thanksgiving, it doesn’t resonate with you in the same way as it might for somebody who’s from Nashville who grew up eating it.”

400 Degrees Hot Chicken
Photo: Aqui Hines

One of those hot chicken enthusiasts is lifelong Nashville resident Aqui Hines, the owner and chef at 400 Degrees, a hot chicken restaurant in the city. Hines, who started her restaurant in 2006, said she grew up eating hot chicken at Prince’s every week and developed a deep love for the dish.
“It makes me happy, it brings me joy. It’s for the culture — growing up, that’s all that we had,” she said. “I fell in love with hot chicken. I fell in love with how it made me feel. I wanted to share that experience with everyone.”
Hines describes her relationship with hot chicken as “complete euphoria,” something that drives her to share the Nashville dish with as many people as she can.
In recent years, she said, she’s noticed a lot of people around the country begin to associate hot chicken with the city of Nashville. As she travels to other cities, Hines said she’s torn on whether she’s a fan of the popularity that her favorite food has experienced.
She said she loves to travel and always wants to be able to grab some hot chicken, even if she’s not in Tennessee. But she also said she’s been disappointed by some of the hot chicken she’s tried in other places, like that at a Florida restaurant that she said was mild at best.
“If you’re going to represent it, represent it well,” Hines said. “People capitalize off of it because you can make money, but it needs to be legitimate. Seventy percent of hot chicken is not authentic — you’ve got to do it for the culture.”

Hot chicken unbound

Eric White, owner and chef of Red’s Hot Chicken
Courtesy: Red’s Hot Chicken

Red’s Hot Chicken owner and chef Eric White began with a humble food truck seven years ago, and he opened his brick-and-mortar restaurant in 2020. He said his success is due to his recipe’s flavor profiles that carefully balance flavor and spice in a healthy middle ground.
White said he likes that the word is getting out about Nashville hot chicken, especially as it brings more tourists to his restaurant, but he’s focused on trying to maintain the heart of the dish as it spreads.
“We actually started the same year as Dave’s Hot Chicken, and of course, they’re the largest name now,” he said. “It’s getting the word out, and I’m getting a lot of calls from people around the country. I’m actually currently working with folks from India, Canada and Germany about starting some hot chicken-type deals there.”
While White said he has yet to try Dave’s Hot Chicken, he’s had just about every fried chicken in Nashville and has a feeling he might not like what he gets from the fast food restaurant, which doesn’t have any locations in Tennessee. Dave’s Hot Chicken did not respond to a request for comment.

Dave’s Hot Chicken in Manhattan. Nov. 27, 2023.
Mike Calia | CNBC

At Prince’s, the unofficial original hot chicken spot, Jeffries said there are mixed feelings about the hot chicken trend. While she said it’s been inspiring to see the dish make it outside her city, she’s torn about retaining the authenticity of it.
“There’s a lot of feelings we have, and they can run from ‘Oh, boy’ to ‘Okay,'” Jeffries said. “But I think ultimately, there’s enough people in the world that this can be shared, even though they do their own version.”
Jeffries said the hot chicken at restaurants outside Nashville is an entirely different version of the dish and that the authentic recipe can only be found at Prince’s or other local restaurants.
“It’s a humbling experience to think this one little piece of chicken has now made it across the world,” Jeffries said. “I wonder sometimes what Thornton would really think right now to see his chicken move around the world — what would he say to us as we get ready for the next generation? But at the core of it, it’s still the exact same hot chicken he served.”
TUNE IN: The “Cities of Success” special featuring Nashville will air on CNBC on Dec. 6 at 10 p.m. ET/PT. More