Even for a restaurant pro with a winning track record, Ashley Morris said he found taking over and reimagining a new business daunting. He summed up his feelings in two words: excited and terrified.
“Just like our employees, I’m learning the business, too,” said Morris, who last year bought the Wing Zone chain of chicken restaurants with business partner Jason Smylie.
Morris, a longtime Valley resident, has some experience to fall back on. He’s also CEO of the Capriotti’s sandwich shop chain.
Since taking over, the partners have been busy tweaking the Wing Zone brand—from some of the food offerings to the look and feel of the restaurants. There are over 60 locations across the United States and abroad.
The first Wing Zone in the Valley, a couple of blocks east of Craig Ranch Regional Park in North Las Vegas, opened July 11.
“We wanted to go out and do what we did with Capriotti’s again, and we wanted to be in the chicken space,” Morris said. “We wanted a concept that we could grow alongside Capriotti’s, and we felt like chicken was very on-trend.”
In 2008, a few years after opening a Capriotti’s restaurant together, Morris and Smylie purchased the entire chain.
Capriotti’s was founded in Delaware in the 1970s, and when the duo made their play for the company, there were about 40 locations.
Today, the chain has over 180 restaurants across the country, with more than 40 in Southern Nevada.
“Our comfort zone is franchising and scaling fast-casual restaurants,” Morris said. “As far as chicken, chicken is having its run right now. The burger space had its run for a very long time.”
Morris said the recent rise of chicken as a popular fast-casual food can partly be attributed to brands like Chick-fil-A and Raising Cane’s.
Chicken is as popular as it’s ever been, especially for the lunch customer, Morris said.
For the Wing Zone brand, however, it’s not so much about the chicken sandwich, tender or nugget but—as the name suggests—wings.
“Those other aspects of chicken, they’ve been done over and over. But doing a phenomenal wing hasn’t traditionally been done,” Morris said. “Wings, for the most part, have been a food you can get at a bar, as an appetizer on a menu, or at a sit-down restaurant. Other than Wingstop, there aren’t a lot of places out there doing fast-food wings well.”
Wing Zone has just over 30 locations in the United States, mostly in the Southeast.
Morris and Smylie have identified nearly a dozen places in the Las Vegas area for new Wing Zone stores.
For now, any Las Vegas stores will be corporate-owned, but there will likely be franchise opportunities in the future, they said.
Though they have business interests around the world, Morris and Smylie said the introduction of the Wing Zone brand to the Las Vegas market is near and dear to their hearts.
Both men moved to the Las Vegas Valley with their families from California as children in the early 1990s before putting down roots here.
They also attended UNLV together, where they got their taste for the food at Capriotti’s.
“Wing Zone was born in the South, but it’s going to feel like a down home Vegas place if we have anything to say about it,” Morris said. “Like with what we do on the Capriotti’s side, we’re going to be intimately involved in the community with our Wing Zone brand.”
On the food preparation side, the Wing Zone product is different than most restaurant-style wings in that theirs are baked in olive oil before they are deep fried, Morris said.
“It creates a more juicy, bigger wing,” Morris said. “What we also do is get the customer the wing fast. It’s not a 15- or 20-minute process. You order your wings, and you get them in just a few minutes. You’re getting what we think is a better product in a time that’s about 90% faster.”
At the North Las Vegas store, the customer experience is centered on convenience.
Customers can order from kiosks or their phone while at the restaurant, and Morris hinted it’s likely that “robotic automation” will soon be part of the Wing Zone experience.
“We’re highly focused on forward tech with this company,” Morris said. “I’m hesitant to say right now, we could even have futuristic drone delivery. We have a fully commitment to technology. People will see some cool things.”
Click HERE to subscribe for free to Vegas Inc’s BizClick newsletter. Stay up to date with the latest business news in Las Vegas sent directly to your inbox each Monday.