A local restaurant franchisee has enjoyed a successful nine-year run opening Wingstop restaurant locations, while the chain's parent company has experienced an even greater, booming business.
Texarkana, Ark., native and Fort Worth resident Tommy Hicks has owned eight franchise locations of Wingstop – an aviation-themed restaurant primarily serving chicken wings – in the past eight years.
Meanwhile, Wingstop Inc. has seen its business skyrocket; the Richardson-based chain has grown from about 10 area stores in the late 1990s to nearly 600 built or under development nationwide and sales exceeding $200 million in 2007, according to a company statement.
There are about 20 Wingstop restaurants in the Fort Worth-Arlington area – seven in Fort Worth – that offer the standard menu: nine flavors of chicken wings, including teriyaki, Hawaiian and hickory smoked barbecue. The most popular flavor is a tie between original hot and lemon pepper, Hicks said.
“Wingstop has such great food, great atmosphere – the whole nine yards,” said Hicks, 33, who opened his latest location on Eighth Avenue at the end of November 2007. “And you get to visit with your customers and they become your friends too.”
Those customers have led Hicks to open each of his locations, he said, encouraging him to open here or there to serve a particular area or neighborhood.
Opening a Wingstop can cost between $247,900 and $400,900, according to Wingstop Inc., but Hicks said his three most recent locations – North Richland Hills, Arlington and Fort Worth’s Eighth Avenue – cost about $320,000, adding existing franchisee’s benefit from company incentives and reduced prices.
Hicks and fellow investors operated a Sonic location in Arlington during the late 1990s before he found a new venture to explore: a small but growing restaurant chain called Wingstop.
“I ate at the one at Valley Ranch, right across from the practice field for the Cowboys,” Hicks said. “I ate there quite a bit and fell in love with the food and thought, ‘Man, I’ve got to have one of those.’”
At that point nine years ago, Hicks said, there were only about six or seven stores on the ground and, in 1999, he purchased the No. 4 Wingstop, at Bryant Irvin Road and Interstate-20.
Customers weren’t immediately savvy to the new restaurant, however, due to the chain’s unfamiliar name.
“They thought we were a boot store, selling Red Wing boots,” he said. “They didn’t know we were selling chicken wings.”
So Hicks and wife Jana began promoting the business, passing out menus to get the word out and by the end of 2000, they had increased revenue to $698,000 – a 103 percent increase from 1999’s annual revenue of $344,000.
Little by little, Hicks continued to grow his operation, adding a store a year on average and, sometimes, selling locations to friends and family members (Hicks’ father-in-law currently owns the No. 4 location).
“I try to be very selective [on new locations] because I don’t want to infringe on other franchisee’s business,” he said.
It’s hard to distinguish which of the eight location has been the most profitable, Hicks said, adding “they’ve all been pretty successful, but Sycamore and McCart, which I don’t own anymore, has been my biggest in terms of volume.”
Chicken wings are popular these days: Minnesota-based Buffalo Wild Wings has opened more than five locations outside of Loop-820 in Fort Worth, and Buffalo Bros Pizza, Wings & Subs recently opened on University Drive, about a mile from Hicks’ Eighth Avenue location.
Despite added competition from other similar restaurants, Hicks said those establishments don’t serve the same customer who visits Wingstop.
“It’s kind of easy to separate ourselves,” Hicks said. “We’re not the same as Hooters or Buffalo Wild Wings – those are more of a sit-down like Chili’s or Applebee’s. Eighty-five percent of our business is out the door.”
Those other restaurants don’t benefit from the name recognition and high-profile spokesmen Troy Aikman and Dallas Mavericks’ Jason Terry that Wingstop does, Hicks said.
“(Wingstop) sells itself as long as you do your work and train your people right,” Hicks said.
After opening three Wingstop locations in the past year alone, Hicks is hesitant to consider opening a ninth location, saying the area is “sold up” and he doesn’t want the locations to “cannibalize” one another.
“The area is getting so saturated,” Hick said. “We’ve got 65 locations in D/FW. There’s just not anymore room around here.”
Still, if a customer mentions a potential location or something comes up, Hicks said, “I’d consider building another.”