East Coast Wings and Grill Meets with Franchise Interviews

Sam Ballas, CEO of East Coast Wings and Grill. Sam will be talking with Marty and Don about why East Coast Wings & Grill has enjoyed 24 consecutive quarters of positive same store sales increases despite other restaurants seeing consecutive losses. Committed to family and far different from the norm in the chicken wing segment, Ballas and Kontos took over in 2000, after they noticed that the vast majority of wing concepts focused on pushing alcohol sales to make money. By creating a warm and inviting decor and focusing on families, customers started flocking to the restaurants. In fact,alcohol sales at East Coast Wings & Grill attribute for less than 8.5 percent of total sales, while the wings account for more than 35 percent. Another reason for their success is the diverse menu offerings. The East Coast Wings & Grill menu offers an array of high quality food including wraps, salads, overstuffed sandwiches, burgers and more. While the wings will always be the staple and have won every major chicken wing award in North Carolina, East Coast Wings & Grill differentiates itself from other wing concepts by providing high quality food other than wings. The menu offerings consist of more than 90 percent fresh, never frozen food. ABOUT EAST COAST WINGS East Coast Wings & Grill, a fast growing casual dining chicken wing franchise, has 12 locations in North Carolina and many expected to be opening in 2010. The franchise concept not only caters to the chicken wing lover, which hit previously unseen levels of popularity in 2009 including the sale of more than 13 billion whole chicken wings, by offering 75 different flavors of chicken wings, but also salads, wraps, sandwiches, burgers and more, all using fresh not frozen ingredients.