Member Article

US chicken concept spreads its wings to the UK with help from South Tyneside’s RDA

South Tyneside-based Restaurant Design Associates (RDA) has led the design and installation of the first UK branch of Wing Zone, a US-founded chicken wing concept.

Wing Zone was founded in 1991 by Matt Friedman and Adam Scott who started their business by selling buffalo wings to students at the University of Florida. The company now has more than 100 units across North America and an increasing number of outlets in Panama, South America and Beijing.

Wing Zone UK – the master franchisee for the UK - appointed RDA to design and install its first store, a 32-cover restaurant in London’s Finsbury Park, which serves American-style wings in a choice of nine flavours, as well as burgers, fries, sandwiches, salads and sides.

Nick Bradley, RDA’s lead designer for both projects, said: “We’ve thoroughly enjoyed engaging with these very distinctive, exciting high street brands to bring their diverse food offerings to new areas.

“We began working with the team at Wing Zone UK earlier this year, when they were looking for a partner to provide a ‘turn-key’ service, which involved developing the Wing Zone concept, producing site-specific detailed designs, and managing the full installation of their store.

“Prior to the site-specific design at Finsbury Park, we spent a lot of time looking at the existing Wing Zone branding and some of the existing sites in the US, and came up with a new interior concept that would better fit the expectations of the UK demographic, and particularly the London demographic. The end result is an altogether more sophisticated yet ‘urban’ and ‘edgy’ interior design.

“We liaised very closely with the team in the US to learn their operation and source a range of specific catering equipment to provide a well oiled, tried and tested operation. Some of the items were delivered from the US, and others were manufactured by our suppliers in the UK to bespoke US specifications.”

“We are very proud of being involved in Wing Zone’s journey into the UK market from the outset, and leading the development of the UK interior design. It’s fantastic to see this come to fruition at Finsbury Park.

RDA’s second high street contract win this year is with Wrapchic – an expanding, Birmingham-based chain which was established in 2012 by Mahesh Raikar and specialises in serving Indian-style burritos to lunchtime customers. RDA was appointed to lead the development of a new Wrapchic kiosk in The Broadway - Bradford’s new shopping centre.

Nick added: “Working with the Wrapchic brand has also been a wonderfully creative, fun project for our team and we plan to expand on our work in this field in the coming months.”