Restaurateurs appreciate adventurous eaters

Describe your business.

WingTime is a fast casual chicken joint with fresh, cooked-to-order chicken fingers and wings. We specialize in unique flavors and rubs. We also have gluten-free chicken fingers and our own line of desserts.

Who are your customers?

Our customer base is diverse. We see teenagers coming in after school to get chicken fingers, baby boomer women visiting us as part of a girls’ night, families coming in for our party packs and everything in between. We’re on the border of Las Vegas and North Las Vegas, and we’re proud that we even see customers from as far as Henderson. We’re also growing our carry-out business and receiving more catering orders.

What’s the most interesting flavor you’ve explored on wings?

We offered a special Margarita flavor for National Margarita Day, which was a tequila-based sauce with some other flavors, served with a lime. The Peanut Butter Jelly Time wing is another one of our many specialty flavors.

What inspired you to include gluten-free items on your menu?

Lance’s son has celiac disease and a lot of Americans are trying to eliminate gluten from their diets for medical or health reasons, so this is one way for us to cater to this growing trend. We keep our fryers gluten-free and most of our flavors are gluten-free. We are even working on gluten-free desserts.

What’s the most important part of your job?

Being a responsible business, providing a good example for our staff and listening to our customers. We also have a responsibility to the community. We believe in supporting schools and nonprofit organizations.

What schools, nonprofits or charities have you supported?

We make it a priority to support our neighborhood. We recently partnered with Triggs Elementary for a leadership event and we’ve also sponsored the Mountain Ridge Little League and helped Nellis Air Force Base, to name a few. We are excited to be in talks with Three Square, which does great work in our community.

What is your business philosophy?

A great product served by great people leads to great quality and great service one meal at a time.

What is the best part about doing business in Las Vegas?

Las Vegans have a great palate and are adventurous. It makes it fun to do unusual flavors because Las Vegans appreciate it. Las Vegas is also a diverse community with people from all over the world living here.

What obstacles has your business overcome?

We opened in a location that had the same product we sell and so many people did not realize that the business was closed for over a year before we opened.

We changed the décor and we offer a completely different menu, so once people try us, they invariably return and bring friends.

Where do you hope to expand to?

We never got into business with the intention of having just one location. There is room for more stores in the Las Vegas market, and our next market might be Utah.

What has been your hardest lesson in business?

To be patient. Things always work out, but sometimes it just takes longer than we want.

What other businesses have you owned, and how did that influence your business model at WingTime?

We both have a lot of history in the restaurant business, including background in creating concepts.

We have worked with brands such as Great American Cookies, Create Burgers and Frozen Custard, Pinkbox Doughnuts, WingStop, Krispy Kreme, Capriotti’s and Salted Malted.