Auburn-founded restaurant chain Chicken Salad Chick reached a milestone on Nov. 8 with the opening of their 100th store in Nicholasville, Kentucky.
The new location, which is just outside of Lexington, is Chicken Salad Chick’s northern-most restaurant and first store in Kentucky.
The chain, which serves more than a dozen Southern-style chicken salad flavors in their restaurants, was founded in Auburn in 2008 by Stacy Brown and now has presence in 12 states.
“It’s been doing fantastic,” said Vice President of Marketing Tom Carr about the new store. “On its grand opening day … it didn’t hit the record of grand opening day sales but it was the second, so it’s our second highest grand opening.”
The new restaurant held various giveaways for their opening, including free chicken salad for a year to the first 100 people to visit the store on Nov. 8.
Chicken Salad Chick also opened their 101st store in the Houston, Texas, area on Nov. 13 and plans to open five more before the end of 2018. In total, the company will have 28 new restaurant locations established in 2018 by the end of the year, the most they have opened in a single year to date.
“We would not have made it to one hundred without the support that we’ve had from the Auburn community and Auburn University since we started,” Carr said. “There’s so much about our roots being based here in a town like Auburn and involved with the University that really has supported us to get to the size we are at this point.”
Carr said there were people that came to the Nicholasville store opening that had originally discovered Chicken Salad Chick in Auburn.
“We have fun every time we open a new restaurant no matter where it is, we get to get our war eagle chant out,” Carr said. “It definitely reminds us that that Auburn community is so strong and so big across the country.”
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