Jul. 23—When Bobby Saenz opened his first Wing Barn on Boca Chica Boulevard in Brownsville on May 27, 2010, his goal was to eventually get to 10 stores.
He achieved that goal with the grand opening of the company's second Edinburg location on June 23, an event Saenz admitted was "pretty special to me." Now he's turning it up to 11 with a second McAllen Wing Barn, scheduled to open in less than two months.
In addition to the two Edinburg locations and soon-to-be two McAllen stores, the company has another one in Brownsville, two in Harlingen and one each in one in Olmito, San Juan and Weslaco. The original Brownsville store has doubled in size and recently completed a remodel.
Just staying in business during a global pandemic is a rough undertaking for a restaurant, but actually growing a restaurant chain during one is something else again, as Saenz has learned first hand.
"It's been tough," he said. "These past couple of years have been a significant challenge to us. It's one thing after another, and it's just trying to find a way to get it going and get it done."
One of the more serious issues Wing Barn and every other chicken wing purveyor in America had to contend with during the peak of the pandemic was a shortage of a key menu item: wings. There simply weren't enough of them to go around.
"You call your supplier and he says I don't have any wings to send you — that's a problem," Saenz said. "We were definitely scrambling to get our supply. We had to go through different vendors at different times to try to get what we needed. On top of that our price went up over 100 percent, literally 100 percent within a month and a half or two."
That cut into the company's margins of course, as have the higher wages necessary just to get prospective hires in the door much less keep them. The endless supply chain irritations have included not being able to source cups with the Wing Barn logo for more than a year, which drives Saenz crazy.
"I hate just having the plain, white cup, but it's out of our control," he said. "But it's coming back soon. That's already in the works now."
The company, like other restaurants, has been forced to raise its menu prices in order to keep making money, though Saenz said he's loathe to do it and is being very cautious.
"You never want to do that," he said. "We've always been known for value and we want to stick to that."
With that in mind, Wing Barn is "going all in" on a two-for-one wing special in August and September, Saenz said.