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\n Disco Chicken ranked 3rd best gluten-free restaurant in the world
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Owner Dustin Cochran did that on purpose.<\/p>\n
“We do that intentionally so if you come in here you don’t have some pre-bias that, \u2018Oh, it can\u2019t be good.\u2019 I would challenge anybody that our chicken tender is better than any fast food place,” Cochran said.<\/p>\n
The brick-and-mortar location at Kern’s has been open for almost a year, but he operated out of a food truck before that.<\/p>\n
He said he bought Donut Theory and turned it into Disco Chicken, and that’s when he became dedicated to making sure it remained gluten-free.<\/p>\n
“The lady that founded [Donut Theory] had celiac disease and so did several of her children. She had reached out to me about opening a donut shop. It was her dream to have a gluten-free donut shop and I own Richy Kreme Donuts, so she had sourced me out for a consult and then over time we became friends,” Cochran said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But, about a year later, she was moving out of state. She told him either she handed him the business, or it closed its doors. He said choosing to take over Donut Theory was the start of something bigger.<\/p>\n
“I don’t have to eat gluten free. I don’t have celiac disease, but I saw what a need there was for it,” Cochran said.<\/p>\n
Now, Disco Chicken has a dedicated community, and most weekends, the business has a steady line of customers ready to order.<\/p>\n
Thanks to that community, Disco Chicken is sitting at the number three spot for best gluten-free restaurants worldwide on the “Find Me Gluten Free” app.<\/p>\n
The app is driven entirely by reviews and, as of the time of writing, Disco Chicken has 393 reviews and a solid 5-star rating.<\/p>\n
“To open that app and see that the number one place in the world is Amsterdam and the number two is Spain and then Knoxville, Tennessee is number three and then number four is New York City … it makes me super proud and I really can’t believe it,” Cochran said. “There’s a good chance that we have a shot of being the top-rated gluten-free restaurant in the world.”<\/p>\n
But Cochran, who grew up on a farm in Grainger County, said running a gluten-free business hadn’t always been in the cards. In fact, after time working at the University of Tennessee, he ended up with a star-studded resume. But after a pivot into healthcare, his outlook changed and he stopped chasing fame.<\/p>\n
“I worked at a hospital and I was flashy and I thought I could cook anything,” Cochran said. “I fed a lady her last meal and that really changed my paradigm and I thought, ‘Huh, I’ve done this for me, but you should really do it for other people’ … It was not about how good I liked it or how delicious I could make it for Dustin. It was about what I could do to connect other people.”<\/p>\n
That desire for connection is what pushed Cochran to establish his restaurant as a wholly gluten-free facility. He said he likes that people with celiac disease can come to the counter and order anything on the menu without compromising their health.<\/p>\n
“I feel like everybody deserves a chance to have somewhere to go to eat, and we’re filling a need in Knoxville that nobody else is. We have the only place that you can walk in and we say you can have everything here, you don’t have to worry about anything, so there’s no risk,” Cochran said. “I think that has to be relaxing to people.”<\/p>\n
Cochran isn’t pausing to celebrate his success, either; instead of sitting in the present, his eyes are already on the future, and how he can grow his empire.<\/p>\n
He has plans to open a second Disco Chicken location at Covenant Health Park this fall, another business in Kern’s next week and he said his dream is to have the world’s first gluten-free drive-thru.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The new business \u2014 Woksville \u2014 will offer Mongolian stir-fry, entirely gluten-free, just steps from Disco Chicken.<\/p>\n
And the Covenant Health Park Disco Chicken, which will be five times the size of its Kern’s location, will be overseen by Cochran’s mother, Sherry.<\/p>\n
“I grew up on a farm and when I was a kid she just worked around the clock to take care of our family,” Cochran said. “All the questions you asked me about how it feels … she gets to enjoy that even more than I do, so I think that’s really great for her.”<\/p>\n
But don’t worry, they aren’t stepping away from their theme; the location will be entirely gluten-free, and will offer burgers, combining Disco Chicken with another one of Cochran’s businesses, T.J. Ralph’s.<\/p>\n
He isn’t forgetting his roots, either. He says the Kern’s Disco Chicken isn’t going anywhere.<\/p>\n
“It’s very humbling,” he said. “People just love it, this is their place.”<\/p>\n
Disco Chicken will be celebrating its one-year anniversary this summer, and Cochran says you can join them on July 18 to celebrate with fun, festivities and plenty of gluten-free goodies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"What do Amsterdam, Barcelona and Knoxville have in common? Those are the cities with the top three rated…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":712716,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[97,269],"class_list":["post-712715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nutrition","tag-health","tag-nutrition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=712715"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712715\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/712716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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