Chick-fil-A North Augusta has announced its plans to open a new location along the Exit 5 corridor.
The franchise had been eyeing the area for several years, said owner and operator Jon Dawkins, but the restaurant chain’s pattern of opening roughly 120 restaurants a year nationally, is both why it took so long to finalize, and why the opportunity is available now.
“It’s almost like we knew we had to wait in line until it was our turn,” said Dawkins.
There’s no exact address yet for the upcoming chicken sandwich restaurant, but the designated parcel is on the corner of Edgefield Road and Walnut Lane.
“Directly next to the Wendy’s,” Dawkins said. The Wendy’s restaurant on that corridor is at 1061 Edgefield Road.
The timeline for both construction and operation is tentative. The chicken restaurant aims to break ground by this summer, in time to open by early next year. Dawkins said that he’ll begin forming the team for the new restaurant about 90 days before opening, and expects to bring approximately 40 team members from the current North Augusta location to the new one.
“We feel like that’s a win all the way around, because some of my employees live closer to that location, so that helps them,” he said. “We want to bring some of our tenured employees into that new location; that just helps things get off to a great start immediately, [and] that helps our guests as they start to frequent there.”
The new Chick-fil-A will be coming on the heels of the Knox Avenue restaurant celebrating 20-year anniversary, as it first opened in August of 2003.
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter covering business for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
