Chick-Fil-A coming to Mustang

By Jacob Sturm

[email protected]

Chick-Fil-A has plans to come to Mustang, after upwards of two years of communication between a developer and the company.

The plans were confirmed from a social media post from Mustang Mayor Brian Grider on Sept. 17. The post read as follows: “Thank you so much to the City Staff at the City of Mustang for their continued work with Chick-fil-A – we are so excited to welcome you to Mustang!”

Mustang City Manager Tim Rooney also spoke regarding the announcement the following day.

Rooney said the location will be between the Panda Express and the building that houses Qdoba in an empty lot in the Mustang Marketplace development. The address is 1221 E. State Highway 152.

He said it would be hard to determine the financial impact Chick-Fil-A will have on Mustang due to not knowing how much traffic the location will get from people currently going to other close restaurant locations like the Yukon location or the store up on Interstate 40.

“Obviously we know it’s a very popular restaurant, and while we can ask them for estimates for what they believe will generate in sales, we conservatively believe that the sales tax revenue generated from Chick-Fil-A could be as much as $150,000 a year,” Rooney said.

He added that Chick-Fil-A is a very popular product by consumers and tends to be a sales tax game-changer when they come to a community.

“We’re excited when any new business comes to our community, particularly any business that is located in a neighboring community,” Rooney said. “Many times, we’ll have retailers and restaurants that will be hesitant in locating in Mustang because of the proximity to facilities in Yukon, but as we’ve proven again and again in Mustang, our Walmart outsells Yukon’s Walmart and several of our businesses do much better than their counterparts in Yukon.”

An added benefit of restaurants being interested in coming to Mustang is an increased amount of alternative dining options being provided for the community.

Melissa Helsel, the Community Development Director for the City of Mustang, said the city has done surveys as part of an overall comprehensive plan in the past, with Chick-Fil-A being very high on the list of desired restaurants from the surveys’ data.

Rooney also reiterated Chick-Fil-A has a track record for being good community partners, through things like working with public libraries and donating to the communities they are in.

There is no known timeline for the completion of the building at this time. Rooney did say, however, that Chick-Fil-A has picked up building permits.

“We’re very excited about them coming to our community,” Rooney said. “This just, again, adds more options and is something that we know the developer had been working on for a little over two years, and we worked on the development agreements with the developer for about six months before we got that finalized before that… So, it took a long time to bear fruit.”

Mustang Chamber of Commerce President and CEO, Renee Peerman, also shared her thoughts on the development.

“Mustang’s economic growth continues to climb, and nothing displays more evidence of that than Chick-Fil-A’s decision to open a store in Mustang,” Peerman said. “This new restaurant will be able to serve our own Mustang residents, which is more preferable than losing the revenue to Yukon or OKC. As is the case with our other local restaurants and retailers, we will draw business from Tuttle and other surrounding areas as well.”