New Centerville restaurant sets opening date

A Kansas-based restaurant chain announced today it will open its first Dayton-area location Aug. 23 near the Cornerstone of Centerville — and there are likely more locations on the way.

The region's first Freddy's Frozen Custard & Steakburgers is located at 5501 Wilmington Pike at Whipp Road, across from Costco Wholesale. The space previously housed a KFC restaurant, which shut down earlier this year.

The 3,200-square-foot restaurant will employ about 85 and will seat about 100.

“We feel our concept is a great fit for the Wilmington Pike and East Whipp Road retail corridor, and we look forward to joining the neighborhood,” said Matt Saunders, head of development for PSP Foods, the franchisee for Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers’ Ohio restaurants.

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PSP Foods owns and operates two Cincinnati-area Freddy’s locations in Amelia and Milford, and is building out three more, one in West Chester and two in Cincinnati. And the chain is looking to expand its Dayton-area presence.

“We want to focus on making sure we get this location open, operating smoothly and doing well before we announce any expansion plans, but we’re always on the lookout for sites that would be a great fit for Freddy’s, and we hope to expand our presence in Dayton over the next few years,” Saunders told this news outlet in May.

The restaurant’s menu includes ground-beef burgers, Vienna Beef hot dogs and shoestring fries, as well as an assortment of desserts, including chocolate and vanilla frozen custard. The restaurants’ atmosphere is designed to evoke “the America of the late 1940s and early 1950s, a post-war era of optimism, pride and values focusing on unity and quality family time,” Saunders said in a release.

The Wichita, Kansas-based Freddy’s, founded in 2002, operates about 200 restaurants in 30 states from California to Pennsylvania. It opens a new location around the country every month, a spokeswoman for the chain said this morning.

Freddy’s joins Bagger Dave’s Burger Tavern, Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen, Panda Express, and MOD Pizza in making or planning to make their entry into the Dayton-area market at or near the Cornerstone of Centerville development off I-675 at Wilmington Pike.

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Freddy’s was recently named for the third year in a row as one of the top ten on Franchise Times magazine’s “Fast & Serious” list. In 2015, Freddy’s was recognized as one of Entrepreneur Magazine’s Franchise 500, and was named one of the five fastest-growing chains by Nation’s Restaurant News for the second consecutive year.

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