Chicken is the focus of a new quick-service restaurant (QSR) that convenience-store chain Chillbox is opening in one of its Warren, Michigan, locations.
BirdBox, which had a soft opening about 11 days ago, sells bone-in fried chicken pieces along with four chicken sandwiches, chicken tenders, four sides, a house salad, two appetizers (fried corn ribs and tator tachos) and a burger. There also are strawberry, vanilla and chocolate milkshakes and six sauces.
The burger option started as a limited-time option but, because it has become the most popular item, will become a permanent menu addition when the location has its grand opening, Ali Beydoun, foodservice director at Chillbox, owned by New Haven, Michigan-based Bazco Oil, told CSP. The grand opening date has not yet been set, he said, but probably will be at the end of 2024 or early 2025.
Bazco Oil/Chillbox is No. 172 on CSP’s 2024 Top 202 ranking of U.S. c-store chains by store count.
During the soft opening, “we are working out any of the bugs, and we’re seeing what works and what does not,” Beydoun said. “And in the new year, we’re going to be basically adjusting the menu.”
“Right now, we found people are not really looking for the bone-in chicken breast fried,” he said. “So, the only thing we’re frying right now are the legs and the thighs. We have, however, had a lot of customers ask us about wings, so that's probably going to be something I add to that menu, but that’s going to be at a higher price point because right now wings are so expensive.”
“Our menu is actually very small, but it’s got a lot of variety on it,” he said.
Beydoun described BirdBox, at 25700 Dequindre Road, as similar to Alexandria, Louisiana-based Krispy Krunchy Chicken and Birmingham, Alabama-based Chester’s Chicken, “where we have fried chicken that’s available and the customer will come up to the register and order three pieces of this or three pieces of that.”
Combos
Also on the menu are BirdBox Combos (pictured top right), at $9.99 each. These include one of the four aforementioned chicken sandwiches, which are:
- The OG: American cheese, lettuce, tomato, pickles and ranch dressing
- Nashville Hot: Nashville hot sauce, coleslaw and sweet and spicy pickles
- Sweet Thai Chili: Sweet and spicy chili sauce, coleslaw and pickles
- CBR Wrap: Flour tortilla, crips chicken, American cheese, beef bacon, lettuce, tomato, pickle and ranch dressing
The combos also include one of four sides: fries, onion rings, tater tots or potato wedges, along with a 24-ounce fountain drink.
Quick Work
Beydoun said the restaurant “came into fruition pretty quickly. We wanted to get it launched before the New year was up, so we’ve had about a month and half.”
It started when the lease on a third-party restaurant in the store wasn’t renewed.
“We needed to replace them with something, and we decided instead of going out and finding somebody else, we are going to try to do this on our own, to do some kind of full-time food service, not just a pizza program or something like that.
“I think so far it’s going pretty well,” he said, adding that all the offerings in this QSR can be ready in less than nine minutes.
‘We want to be established and ready to go, which is why we decided to go with such a long time for a soft opening.’
“The chicken sandwiches take about six minutes,” he added. “We’re really trying to get people in as fast as possible because, especially here, it’s an industrial area with a lot of factories and people trying to get in and out of lunch real quickly.”
During the soft opening, Beydoun is collecting data, talking with customers, helping train employees and addressing any problems that arise.
“We don’t want to open up and make mistakes,” he said. “We want to be established and ready to go, which is why we decided to go with such a long time for a soft opening because we’re trying to work out any bugs and make all of our mistakes.
“We haven’t even done anything on social media,” he added. “We’re taking this time to really do our homework and really see what it is that people like, if there's any adjustments we have to make. What doesn’t work. What does work.”
Top Seller
In the first 10 days of being open, Beydoun said one thing they’ve learned is that “beef is king,” he said, laughing. He noted that the smashburger they’re running as a special has outsold all other menu items.
“I think people are still in love with beef, which is fine,” he said. “Chicken is obviously a little more affordable.”
Fady Bazzi, Chillbox operations manager and co-owner, wanted to go with a fried chicken concept because, Beydoun said, “Number one, it’s a popular product and, number two, if you can get a good program in place with fried chicken, it’s not hard to replicate. It doesn’t take too much space.”
This location is a former Bob Evans restaurant, so the BirdBox kitchen is quite large, Beydoun said. Consequently, if BirdBox does expand to more Chillbox locations, they’ll have to “figure out a way to scale it down” to about 20 square feet, he said.
“If we could make this place work, and I think we can, we’ll start working on more locations,” Beydoun said.
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