Louisiana’s Todd Graves Buys 50k Mega Millions Tickets for Cane’s Employees

Wouldn't it be great to have a boss like this?

Todd Graves, the owner of Louisiana-based Raising Cane's restaurants, is making a gamble that could pay off for his employees.

The gamble? He's purchased 50,000 chances in tomorrow night's Mega Millions lottery drawing. At $2 per ticket, that's a $100,000 gamble.

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https://twitter.com/ToddGraves/status/1551673464930668545

Graves posted a video on Twitter with the caption, "POV: You just bought 50,000 Mega Millions Tickets for your Raising Cane's Crewmembers".

His Tweet accompanying the video said, "Buying 50,000 lottery tickets is harder than you think! (smiley face emoji) Hoping to share the winning jackpot with our 50,000 @RaisingCanes Crew."

What's the payoff? Well, so far, just great publicity. Graves is a smart man, and by going public with his purchase, websites like this one will share this story and it will get people talking about Cane's.

What if one of those tickets pays gets all the right numbers? Well, it could mean thousands of dollars for each of Raising Cane's employees.

https://twitter.com/KLFY/status/1551695826908479489

According to the story from KLFY TV10, Graves was quoted as saying

None of what we do at Cane’s would be possible without our Crew, which is why we are always looking for ways to bring them a little extra fun, and if we’re lucky, a surprise on Wednesday morning. - Todd Graves, via KLFY

At the time of this post, the estimated Mega Millions lottery jackpot for tomorrow night's drawing is $810 million.

If one of the tickets that Graves purchased hits just right and matches the 5 white ball numbers and the one gold ball number, his employees are in for a small windfall!

At the current jackpot of $810 million, each of his approximately 50,000 employees would receive approximately $16,200 dollars (according to Siri's math).

Of course, that's before Uncle Sam sits at the table and eats at least one of the chicken fingers in your three-piece box. Along with your bread AND cole slaw. The employees will be lucky if the government leaves them any Cane's sauce at all.

Is the ticket purchase a ploy to get us talking about Raising Canes? Maybe so.

Does Todd Graves really care about his employees enough to do this for them? I've never met the man, but I've heard that he really does care about his employees and does his best to do right by them. And I try to find the best in people, so I'm going to go ahead and think that he really does care for his employees. Besides, without them, he would have a whole lot of chicken to fry.

According to the website Zippia, Raising Cane's annual revenue for 2021 was listed as $1,500,000,000 ($1.5B). The median annual salary for a Raising Cane's employee is $23,941.

The current jackpot total (at the time of this post) is estimated to be $810M, which is just less than half of what Raising Cane's took in last year.

I am hoping that this gamble pays off for his employees.