RICHMOND, Va. – The Anchor Bar at Stony Point Fashion Park is still looking to fill about half of its positions and is hiring about 70 people.
The Anchor Bar, which calls itself the “home of the original chicken wing,” and hails from Buffalo, New York, has signed a 10-year lease and will take over residence at the former Champps Americana location at the South Richmond mall.
The positions that need to be filled include grill cooks, fry cooks, pantry cooks, sauté cooks, prep cooks, line cooks, dishwashers, servers, bartenders, hosts, food runners, bussers. The team is conducting interviews every day in the hiring office at Stony Point, and walk ins are welcome.
This is the link to fill out the applicationfor all positions is here.
The opening date is scheduled tentatively for February 18, according to Matt Foody, the Chief Operating Officer.
Foody, who has been in the restaurant business 20 years, and who helped open Cooper’s Hawk in Short Pump, said that folks have expressed a lot of interest in the grand opening.
The restaurant’s wing origin story goes back to 1964, when bar owner Dominic Bellissimo was tending bar at the flagship Buffalo location. His mother, Teressa, was tasked with fixing up a meal for some friends and so she deep fried chicken parts that would usually go into a soup stock and covered them in a special sauce.
These days there are 9 sauces from which to choose, and one of them is labeled “suicidal.”
The Richmond menu will include wings and boneless bites, hot sandwiches, pizza, salads and house-made desserts. Foody said there will be lots of craft beer including local varieties, on draft and in bottles.
“Additionally, the restaurant has a sports bar component to it and the convenience and accessibility of Stony Point will draw patrons from Chesterfield to the West End, where there are very few sports bar options,” said Reilly Marchant, with commercial real estate brokerage at Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer.
Stony Point’s other restaurant tenants include P.F. Chang’s, Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse, CineBistro, Kobe Sushi, Brio Tuscan Grille, Chipotle, Panera and Les Crepes.
In recent years, Stony Point’s overall performance has trailed its rival Short Pump Town Center – they both opened in 2003 — which in 2012 posted revenue three times that of Stony Point’s, according to RichmondBizSense.
In 2015, the new owner of Stony Point Fashion Park announced plans to spruce up the 13-year-old Southside mall.
Chicago-based Starwood Retail Partners, which purchased the shopping center in 2014, for $72 million, announced a $50 million plan to upgrade Stony Point’s outdoor areas and add more retail options.
The outdoor upgrades include adding games, fountains, tables and fire pits, among other amenities, to the mall’s west side. A new park, dubbed the Triangle Park, created on the eastern side, will feature heated benches and a stage for summer concerts that will turn into an ice skating rink in the winter.
Starwood acquired Stony Point as part of a $1.4 billion, seven-mall deal with Taubman Centers, which developed the Richmond mall in 2003, according to a RichmondBizSense report.
