Three new restaurants coming to Gunbarrel Road
Three growing restaurant brands will enter the Chattanooga market this spring with adjacent eateries along Gunbarrel Road offering gourmet burgers, American barbecue and homemade pizza.
Bad Daddy’s Burger Bar, Mission BBQ , and Uncle Maddio’s Pizza are preparing to locate restaurants in a new $7 million center being built by developer Bassam Issa at 1926 Gunbarrel Road on the site of what was Yessick’s Design Center.
“Chattanooga is an attractive midsized market for a lot of restaurant chains wanting to expand and Gunbarrel Road is usually where anyone new to the market wants to be to capitalize on one of the top commercial zones near Hamilton Place mall,” Issa said. “This will probably attract even more people to Gunbarrel.”
Issa said the new 14,100-squarefoot center should open by April and, in addition to the new restaurants, will include one of the new versions of a Comcast Xfinity store.
Bad Daddy’s, a Denver-based chain of gourmet burgers that began a decade ago in Charlotte, N.C., is expanding into Tennessee with its first unit in Chattanooga. Nick Leach, district manager in the Southeast for Big Daddy’s, said the 3,936-squarefoot restaurant scheduled to open in early April will be the 28th restaurant for the growing burger chain.
“I’m thrilled that we have commenced construction on our awesome new restaurant and can’t wait to introduce the people of Chattanooga — and all across Southeast Tennessee — to our award-winning, chef-driven burgers,” Leach said. “We’ve found the perfect location in Chattanooga and we will soon begin hiring a team of 80-90 talented and fun individuals to join our team and help us share our unique culinary passion with the community.”
Bad Daddy’s Burger Bar said it will source local and fresh ingredients whenever possible. The chain is known for its 13 signature gourmet
burgers, but the menu also features giant chopped salads, specialty sides, appetizers and handspun milkshakes.
Bad Daddy’s newest location will feature an industrial look on the inside and offer casual, family-friendly environment with a patio and bar in addition to its 140-seat restaurant.
“The Chattanooga market is in close proximity to the Atlanta market, where we have already had success,” Leach said. “Chattanooga is also growing a kind of ‘foodie’ feel with a lot of great local restaurants and we felt like this is a great place to place our flag in the sand.”
Bad Daddy’s has set up a job hiring office already and will begin training most of the staff 12 days before the planned April 2 opening, Leach said.
A franchisee for Uncle Maddio’s Pizza hopes to open the first of several potential local units in Chattanooga, also sometime this spring.
Uncle Maddio’s Pizza is based in Atlanta and was founded by the same group that launched Moe’s Southwest Grill. Mike Chaudhary, a Nashville franchisee, said he has signed an agreement to open six of the Uncle Maddio’s restaurants over the next couple of years “and we’re looking at other sites in Chattanooga for other Uncle Maddio’s.
“The other units are still down the road,” he said. “We want to see how this unit does first.”
The new Gunbarrel Road site for Uncle Maddio’s will include seating for 62 persons.
Mission BBQ, the third national restaurant chain moving into the new Gunbarrel development, is a Glen Burnie, Md.-based barbecue chain with nearly 60 outlets that plans to open additional locations this year in Chattanooga and Murfreesboro, Tenn, Weston and Panama City, Fla. and Downers Grove, Ill.
“We believe there is nothing more American than BBQ ,” said Bill Kraus and Steve Newton, the founders of Mission BBQ who opened their first restaurant in 2011. “What we do we do for the love of our soldiers, firefighters, police officers, first responders — all our loved ones in service.”
The Mission BBQ restaurants display a patriotic theme and the restaurant chain says it tries to hire veterans and support local police and firefighters.
Contact Dave Flessner at dflessner@timesfreepresscom or at 757-6340.