Charleys chooses Lancaster for 600th location

Charley Shin has tried a lot of complements to his cheesesteaks over the years at his Charleys restaurants. This time, it’s chicken wings.

The Dublin-based Charleys opened its 600th location Wednesday, a freestanding store on North Memorial Drive in Lancaster, and debuted what Shin believes will be the winning combination for his chain’s future: the usual lineup of cheesesteaks, lemonades and French fries with a full slate of wings, both boneless and bone-in.

“It has taken a lot of trial and error,” Shin said. “We tried chicken fingers two years ago, but we found that wings have a lot more success than fingers.”

Charleys tested the wings in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for The 600th Charleys restaurant and drive-through will include a new menu item by the chain — chicken wings.

about three months, Shin said.

“It is just a barnburner,” Shin said.

The wings come with one of 10 sauces, from mild sweet teriyaki to Angry Ghost (very hot).

The new Lancaster

location also shows off Charleys’ latest store concept, a stand-alone location with a drive-through. Charleys bought the former Tasty Made store, which was an unsuccessful burger concept tested by Chipotle. The dining room was refreshed with handsome, new furniture, but much of the bones of the place didn’t need an update.

Shin also bought the former locations of the failed ShopHouse concept from Chipotle and reopened them last year as Bibibops, a Korean mixed-rice dish concept.

The new store models are a nod to the fact that Charleys has saturated the mall market that it focused on for the past few decades. The mall stores are still doing well, Shin said, with rising same-store sales, but few new malls are being built and the company’s franchisees have been asking for new ways to grow their businesses.

“We now have a different avenue for growth,” Shin said.