One of the Triangle’s top wing spots is opening a new location to feed crowds — safely
There’s a great demand for chicken wings.
At popular wing shop Heavenly Buffaloes in Durham, that demand has been so great at times during the COVID-19 pandemic, that co-owner Mark Dundas worried the crowd of people could be dangerous.
So with public health in mind, Heavenly Buffaloes is opening a new Durham location. The second Durham shop will move into the Erwin Terrace development near Duke University hospital, at 2816 Erwin Road in Durham. The restaurant opens in the former Tamale Factory & Tequila Bar, which closed in 2019.
The new fryers will be frying before next month’s Super Bowl. Dundas, who owns Heavenly Buffaloes with Dain Phelan, said the new location is just a couple of weeks away, with plans to open before the end of January.
Dundas and Phelan opened Heavenly Buffaloes’ first location in 2014, launching as a 300-square-foot wing-frying shack just a few yards from Duke’s East Campus. Dundas once told the News & Observer they could cook one thousand wings every 15 minutes.
Today, Heavenly Buffaloes is one of the Triangle’s most popular spots for buffalo wings, slinging thousands per week. They’ve also added locations on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill and in Greensboro. Fans don’t fret, that bright orange shack that started it all isn’t going anywhere.
“We decided we needed a second location to reduce the strain on our little shack,” Dundas said in a phone interview. “We had been talking about expansion, but COVID was really what finally made us go ahead and do this.”
The new location will have indoor and outdoor seating, making it more like the Chapel Hill location than the original Durham spot. But Dundas said the bulk of the business will still be takeout for now, with only a couple spread out tables available indoors and five picnic tables on the patio.
“This is a long term plan,” Dundas said. “Folks in Durham have been asking for a sit down restaurant, it’s just taken longer than we hoped.”
The original Heavenly Buffaloes location was already set up for the impact of COVID, which forced many restaurants to rely more heavily on takeout sales as dining rooms closed or limited seating.
Heavenly Buffaloes had a different problem: too many people were waiting for wings. The restaurant made multiple pleas on social media for customers to wait for orders in their cars and to keep space from others. On Reddit the restaurant was criticized for the crowd.
Dundas said expanding in Durham had been in the works for a while, but that this move was largely about relieving the overwhelmed fryers at the bright orange Markham Avenue location.
“Waits could sometimes be as long as 45 minutes or an hour,” Dundas said. “We need to reduce the pressure on that location.”
The new Durham spot will also have an expanded menu, adding sandwiches and salads to the long list of wing sauces, waffle fries and dry rubs.
This story was originally published January 13, 2021 at 7:30 AM.
