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Chick-fil-A on Commerce Ave. will close in a few months and move to its new location in the Publix shopping center currently under construction on Vernon Rd.

Operator Josh Sells said that the move is due to the space constraints at the Commerce location.

“It’s an opportunity to have everything we need and give us better traffic flow in and out and have the kitchen that you need to handle the business,” Sells said.

Sells said they considered many different options to deal with the traffic in an out of the restaurant — particularly the drive-thru — but they simply outgrew the location.

“We tried to make it work here but just couldn’t. The designs, it was just still going to be the same in and out,” Sells said,
explaining the decision for the move.

The location has seen significant growth in drive-thru traffic in recent years, particularly since the pandemic.

“We’ve been growing healthily ever since I’ve been here. I’ve been here 12 years,” Sells said. “We have four times as many employees now as when I got here. Since 2020, it’s been explosive growth.”

Sells said the new location will have a double drive-thru and plenty of parking.

“It’s going to be a newer design. We’ll be one of the first ones with this new design on the inside. We’ll have all the new bells and whistles,” Sells said.

“Unfortunately, we’re going to have to close here,” Sells said.

The plan is to close the Commerce location and move to the Vernon location by summer, he said.

“We’re excited. Our desire would have been to have stayed here, but we just couldn’t. We would have been dealing with the same constraints,” Sells said.

Sells said the current location is just too landlocked and getting customers in and out is difficult.

“Over there, we’ll be able to manage the flow of traffic. We’ve got plenty of parking spaces and parking will be completely separated from the drive-thru,” he said.