Thursday, November 8, 2012

Chick-fil-A Now Open in Dunwoody...Kinda

Receipt evidence courtesy of Heneghan's Dunwoody Blog
Atlanta-based Chick-fil-A has opened, albeit temporarily, in the former Arby's in Dunwoody.
 The chicken chain had sought for months to open in the vacant restaurant space and was supposedly competing against at least Starbucks in their attempt to land the space.

Given the limited menu and hours, (currently only original chicken sandwiches or #1 combos and fudge brownies  from 10:30am-8pm ) it's my guess that the food is actually being prepared offsite, presumably at another CFA, and brought there for sale.

From what I understand, the plan is to remain open in the space with a limited menu, exclusively via the drive-thru, until this Saturday, and possibly next week as well.  After this very limited "trial" period, the restaurant will close and be retrofitted to become a full service Chick-fil-A restaurant.  A Chick-fil-A representative reached at a nearby store said the new restaurant may open as early as January.  Personally, this timelime sounds far too optimistic and I'd expect an opening closer to spring, but who knows? 

Many longtime readers will recall that both the Chick-fil-A on Piedmont near the Lindbergh MARTA station as well as the location in Decatur by Decatur High were formerly Hardee's restaurants that were stripped down and rebuilt.

Chick-fil-A had first sought a special land use permit and rezoning approval for the nearby former Blockbuster Video space at the corner of Mount Vernon Highway and Dunwoody Club Drive but was met with fierce community resistance. Community residents feared a detrimental effect on traffic, a result they said, of the planned dual drive thru restaurant.

The fact that Chick-fil-A will now move into an existing restaurant space with an existing drive-thru would seem to eliminate this issue as they would likely be grandfathered into the space.  Some residents I spoke with also surmise this odd, makeshift restaurant is in an attempt to avoid an upcoming policy change in the city of Dunwoody that would have made the restaurant conversion quite a bit more challenging.

UPDATE: As of today, November 8th, I'm told the restaurant will close as of Saturday the 10th and renovate with plans to reopen in May. 

What do you think of Chick-fil-A's plans?  Have you been to this location?  Are you still supporting Chick-fil-A or have you moved on to other eats?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I have moved on where possible. Sometimes the schools ask for it for kid breakfasts, and I'm not going to make a big deal about preferring to go elsewhere. I think I'll pick my fights carefully on that. I love Zaxbys. I do wish they would consider doing breakfast and coming out with a beautiful biscuit. That would be great.

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