ASHLAND – After more than two decades of service, Ashland’s Buffalo Wild Wings will serve its last basket of wings at its Claremont Avenue location on Sunday. But wing lovers have no reason to worry. Two weeks later on Dec. 19, the restaurant will open in its new East Main Street location in front of WalMart.
Local franchise owner Ken Brown said at the end of business Sunday night, the restaurant will close its doors on Claremont Avenue. The next week will be spent cleaning the building and getting it ready to return possession to the building’s owner. An auction will take place Jan. 21 to sell all the furniture and equipment from the current location.
The week of Dec. 12, the employees will train at the new Main Street site. The Ashland Buffalo Wild Wing currently employees around 55 employees and will hire an additional 35 to 40 workers for the new location.
Brown opened the Claremont Avenue location in April 1995 as the 43rd restaurant opened by the chain. Now he also owns BWW restaurants in Wooster, Ontario, Canton, Mentor, Willoughby and Avon Lake.
“I never imagined 21 years ago that we’d own seven stores. We were just looking to buy a business,” Brown said.
The current Ashland location has about 4,000 square feet with seating for 154 people and 28 viewing screens. The new site is almost twice as large with 7,300 square feet with seating for 284 and 64 viewing screens. Included in the 284 seats is an outdoor patio that seats 28 and an indoor/outdoor patio that seats 84.
“The inside of this restaurant is not going to be anything like what you see in Ashland now,” Brown said.
The new restaurant is based on the chain’s “Generation 5” design and will be the first of its kind in the Cleveland area. The design, nicknamed “Stadia,” includes a horseshoe-shaped bar with a “jumbotron” over the bar with two large television screens and more than 60 other screens around the restaurant, mostly on the exterior walls.
The interior will be decorated with jerseys from the local schools, as well as Indians, Browns, Cavaliers and Ohio State decor. Military and law enforcement uniforms will also be on display.
Brown said the menu will remain the same, with its trademark wings along with burgers, sandwiches, appetizers, salads, and wraps. One thing that will change is delivery service. Because of the new restaurant’s location at the edge of town, Buffalo Wild Wings will no longer offer residential delivery service. They will continue to offer weekday delivery to businesses from open to 2 p.m.
Although the move away from the Ashland University neighborhood concerns Brown, he is confident the move will be a positive for the business.
“With the highway business and all the growth that is going on out here, we’ll be fine,” Brown said.
The current Buffalo Wild Wing location was too small for the amount of business it generates thanks to the support of the Ashland area.
“We couldn’t do this without the Ashland community. They’ve patronized us for nearly 22 years and because they have, we’re busting at the seams at that old store,” Brown said. “We’ve got a tiny kitchen. We’ve only got 154 seats and it’s affected our service at times. We’ve just simply outgrown that site and it just wasn’t possible for us to stay where we’re at so we had to look for a much bigger location and I think we have the perfect location.”
