Yahoo Sports Wichita’s newest chicken chain will literally descend upon Wichita on Wednesday
If “seeing a restaurant building delivered by truck and lowered by crane onto a site where it will soon be selling chicken” is on your bucket list, tomorrow is your day.
Between 1 and 2 p.m. on Wednesday, the modular, pre-built structure that will soon hold a new chicken restaurant called Sticky Bird will arrive at 616 S. Tyler and will be carefully placed on the empty lot where another prefab diner — Walt’s Klassics — once operated. That restaurant closed in March of last year and was moved off the site in July.
People are welcome to watch the event, said Jeff and Jay Miller, the brothers who own a newly-formed restaurant group called Cub Creek. The Millers, who also own Wichita’s three Five Guys restaurants, will be the first franchisees of Sticky Bird, which is based in Farmington, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City. It serves chicken fingers, both fried and grilled, plus chicken wings, chicken po boy sandwiches, a taco made with chicken fingers, salads and unique sides like fried mushrooms, buffalo cauliflower and onion straws.
The restaurant also has its own signature sauces and rubs that diners can choose from, and it has gluten-free menu items. On its dessert menu is Dole Whip, a dairy-free fruit soft serve in flavors like pineapple, mango and raspberry that originated at Disneyland in the 1980s and has since developed a cult following.
The new Wichita Sticky Bird restaurant should be open by mid-July, the Millers said. It will have a small dining room that can fit about a dozen people. But its focus will be on the drive-through.
The Miller brothers say they really weren’t looking to get involved with another franchise, but a mutual acquaintance told them about a unique chicken restaurant whose CEO ,Brandon Howard, had family ties in Kansas. They started investigating the concept and loved it, they said. They especially loved the “social initiative” mission of the restaurant: The owners have pledged to commit 1% of all sales from every restaurant it eventually opens toward nonprofit addiction services. And the money will stay in the community.
“Everybody, not just in our industry, but everybody has been touched by addiction. In our stores, we have been personally touched by addiction,” Jeff Miller said. “And it’s really in our small way, because we’re not wealthy guys, to find a way that we can use this small little engine that we have to try to affect some change.”
The Miller brothers say they are excited to be in on the ground floor of a franchise that they think has the ability to become a big deal. They own the Wichita territory and say they hope to eventually have three Sticky Bird restaurants in the area. The next one ideally will be up and running within 18 months. The brothers’ restaurant group is also in charge of finding franchisees for other Midwestern states.
They also like the modular concept, where a pre-made building is delivered on-site. That approach allows them to open restaurants faster and more efficiently and to control costs. They’re working with ModuAll, a local company tied to Lange Real Estate that specializes in producing prefab restaurant buildings.
Modular restaurants are a growing trend in Wichita. The 7 Brew coffee chain, which opened at 3031 E. Central in November, also is in a modular building that was dropped on its lot. Another 7 Brew will go on the spot at Douglas and Rock where a longtime building was recently demolished.
The original Sticky Bird restaurant opened in 2020 as a sister concept to Wingers, a Utah-based sports bar chain that also is expanding.
The Millers say they anticipate that some people will moan about the idea of another chicken restaurant coming to Wichita, but they insist this one is different. They spent last week training in Utah and ate Sticky Bird chicken all week.
“We really feel like this is a superior product,” Jay Miller said. “Otherwise, we wouldn’t be doing this.”
