Connecticut’s leading Kentucky Fried Chicken franchisee is preparing to invest in Hartford’s West End with a larger, updated KFC restaurant.
The city planning and zoning commission earlier this month approved plans submitted from Hines Sudden Service Inc. of Wethersfield to demolish its existing cramped chicken outlet at 501 Farmington Ave. and replace it with one nearly double in size.
The so-called “scrape and rebuild’’ will soon get under way, so the larger, approximately 3,000-square-foot outlet can begin service before August, said President David G. Hines.
Built in the early ‘70s, the current building is roughly 1,700 square feet — too small and outdated, Hines says, to satisfy the standards of Hines’ KFC franchisor, Yum! Brands of Louisville, Ky.
The Farmington Avenue location will be the last in a handful of older KFC outlets in Hines’ portfolio to undergo refurbishing at Yum!’s insistence, he said.
Another KFC store he rebuilt at 300 Burnside Ave. in East Hartford has many of the same exterior and interior features as will the planned Hartford location, Hines said.
He acknowledged the awkwardness of a “substantial investment’’ to upgrade a restaurant at a time when many people are eating more meals at home due to the recession. But the franchisor is calling the shots on it, he said.
“I really don’t have a choice in the matter,’’ he said. “I’d prefer not to do it [now]. But if I didn’t do it, I could lose my franchise.’’
Hines said he has been a KFC franchisee for 25 years, following in the footsteps of his father, who in the 1960s opened his first KFC franchise outlet on Corbin Avenue in New Britain. David Hines’ 23 KFC outlets in Connecticut and 10 in Florida rank him among the chain’s biggest franchisees, he said.
With the addition of a half-acre lot next door, the new KFC restaurant will offer expanded seating and more rear parking, Hines said.
It also will have, thanks to the city’s insistence, an all-brick exterior. Most new KFC stores are partial brick, Hines said.
One ubiquitous fast-food feature it will lack is a drive-through window because the surrounding neighborhood of mostly shops, restaurants and two- and three-bove family houses and apartments is not zoned for one, he said.
Fitness Center Expands
Shoreline Health and Fitness Inc. has leased the retail storefront next door to its Clinton facility at 161 West Main St. to offer expanded classes such as Pilates.
Barry Stratton of The Geenty Group Realtors represented the tenants and the building’s owners, Frederick and Linda Bauer, in the lease.
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Greg Seay is the Hartford Business Journal Web Editor.
