Wing It On! Opens New Store Near CCSU
By Chris Seymour | Correspondent at October 31, 2023 | 8:45 am | Print
Voted “Best Wings” by the readers of The Waterbury Observer every year since 2011, Wing It On! (WIO) has now brought its brand of award-winning chicken up I-84 to New Britain.
The New Britain restaurant - located right near CCSU in the Central Square Plaza at 1537 Stanley St. - serves (what it underscores are “fresh, never frozen”) wings with a choice of 18 different sauces, as well as burgers, salads, and wraps.
“Come check us out,” said founder/CEO Matt Ensero. “It’ll be well worth your time because we have the best wings in the state.”
With 18 sauces to choose from, customers can select flavors with “no heat” (such as garlic parmesan and BBQ cheddar) all the way up to “spicy,” which includes “hot buffalo” and “wings of prey,” which Ensero called “our mouth-numbing death sauce.”
Of course, there are numerous other varieties in between those two extremes, including chipotle ranch, medium buffalo and “red, white ‘n Blue Devils.”
“We renamed that one item just four our New Britain opening because we call them ‘red, white ‘n blue’ in our other locations and it’s basically blue cheese mixed with medium buffalo sauce,” said Ensero.
“Some of our best sellers would be our BBQ cheddar, which sounds weird but once people try it they think it’s really awesome; honey blues is also a really big seller,” added Ensero, noting the latter was also his favorite flavor. “Honey blues are like the red, white and blues, except it’s with a honey heat instead of a medium buffalo so it’s kind of sweet with the blue cheese; my dad calls it ‘chicken candy.’”
All of WIO’s classic and boneless style wings come with store made blue cheese and buttermilk ranch.
While wings may be the big draw at Wing it On!, Ensero is quick to point out there are also a number of other “universally appealing” options.
“That is what makes us unique because a lot of wing franchises in the US are really just known for their wings,” said Ensero. “The problem with that is if you get a family—that’s how you make your money, you want to service a family—they come in, and the husband wants wings but the wife wants a salad, and the kids want cheeseburgers, and maybe one of the kids wants French fries and a wrap. We have an array of options for the whole family.”
The New Britain restaurant is the quick-growing chain’s first full-service franchise (it’s owned by Dan DaSilva), according to Ensero, 29, who began cooking wings as a teenager growing up in Prospect.
“We never had a real dedicated wing joint in our area growing up,” recalled Ensero. “And me and my friends used to watch football every Sunday and argue about who was going to go to one of the good wing joints we liked to go to and drive 25-30 minutes away. The problem with that is you miss the first quarter of the football game by the time you drive there, pick up the wings and come back.”
To avoid that inconvenience, Ensero said he began cooking his own wings at 16-years-old, and about 10 years later, a friend encouraged him to open up his own business.
“I took a chance and opened the first wing joint in Waterbury in August 2011 and I never envisioned it growing this fast,” marveled Ensero. “I really just wanted to have my one little wing joint in Waterbury but the demand was just so explosive that we reached our productive capacity within a year and had to open a second location just to service the other side of Waterbury and it kind of snowballed from there.”
Wing it On! currently has six locations - in New Britain, Waterbury and a Wing it On! Express in Meriden - including licensing agreements with The PourHouse Sports Taverns in Naugatuck and Wolcott, where WIO “handles the food,” said Ensero.
Since the New Britain location opened on Sept. 29, business has been booming, but Ensero emphasized a desire to draw customers from all over New Britain - not just the CCSU area.
“That would really help us stay steady yearlong,” said Ensero. “It’s nice having a town of 14,000 that lives next door, but then overnight, after graduation, the whole town goes away and it turn into a ghost town for the summer.”
WIO’s dine-in and takeout hours are from 11 a.m.-1 a.m. Monday-Wednesday, from 11 a.m.-2 a.m. Thursday-Saturday, and from noon-1 a.m. on Sunday. Delivery hours are from 11 a.m. -1 a.m. Monday-Saturday, and from noon until 8:30 p.m. on Sundays. Customers can visit wingiton.com for more information and can reach the New Britain store at 860-357-3629 or 860-357-2729.
