VENICE — Heidi and Bruce Smith brought their Southern inspired chicken tender recipe down to Florida in 2020, experiencing success with their food truck Chick-N-Nooga around the Sarasota area.
Now, the husband-and-wife duo have their sights set on Venice’s Pioneer Market. According to Bruce, the building was originally an A&W root beer and burger drive-in in the 1960s before becoming a vegetable market in the ’80s.
The couple plan on restoring the building back to its former glory and changing the name to The Island Chick-N-Shack, serving up chicken tenders, waffle fries and homemade sauces. Customers can expect some new menu items, too, like chicken and waffles.
“We were just kind of envisioning that it it could be taken back to the way it used to look in the old days, you know, when it was an A&W in the 60s,” Smith said. “The original building is still there, and the big metal awning is still there in pretty good shape.”
The plan is to have the space to be “open air,” meaning customers can come up order some chicken, sit down outside to eat, or take it and walk around Venice.