Chicken Salad Chick is bringing its scratch-made Southern chicken salad to a second Twin Cities location, this time in Maple Grove, with a grand opening set for Tuesday, Nov. 17. The new restaurant will open at 11615 Fountains Dr., Suite 27, and the first 100 people in line that day will walk away with free chicken salad for an entire year.
The Maple Grove opening follows the chain's Minnesota debut this summer in Apple Valley, as reported by Bring Me The News. That first Twin Cities location opened at 14658 Cedar Avenue in Cedar Marketplace, and according to QSR Magazine, the community was invited to celebrate that grand opening on Tuesday, July 28, with the same first-100 chicken-salad-for-a-year promotion up for grabs.
For the Apple Valley opening, guests had to remain in line and download the Chicken Salad Chick app to qualify, per the same QSR Magazine report. Bring Me The News reports that Maple Grove guests chasing the free-food prize will similarly need to stay in line until the restaurant opens and have the Chicken Salad Chick app downloaded, and that anyone who steps out of line will forfeit their spot to the next person waiting. The outlet also notes the restaurant has no on-site Wi-Fi, and that grand opening day will include other giveaways and festivities beyond the headline promotion.
What's on the Menu
Chicken Salad Chick's menu features more than a dozen varieties of scratch-made Southern-style chicken salad, according to Bring Me The News, along with gourmet soups, sandwiches, side dishes and desserts. QSR Magazine similarly describes a dozen-plus variety of made-from-scratch chicken salad flavors alongside fresh sides, soups, signature sandwiches and desserts. The chain was founded in Alabama in 2008 and is now based in Atlanta, Georgia.
A Chain on a Growth Tear
Maple Grove's new restaurant arrives as Chicken Salad Chick pushes deeper into national expansion. As of Oct. 29, the company had surpassed 350 restaurants across 27 states, according to a release distributed via PR Newswire. That same release states the chain opened its first restaurants in five new states this year — Minnesota, New York, Pennsylvania, Utah and West Virginia — and has awarded more than 100 franchise units so far in 2026, with almost 350 more locations sitting in its development pipeline. The company also signed a 25-unit development agreement for upstate New York, described in the release as the largest development agreement in its history.
Scott Deviney, Chicken Salad Chick's president and CEO, oversees a company that has also been expanding in its own backyard. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the chain recently opened what it calls its most urban location yet, bringing a restaurant to Peachtree Center in downtown Atlanta.
How Other New Markets Celebrated
Minnesota isn't the only new market where Chicken Salad Chick has leaned on a free-food giveaway to draw a crowd. When the chain opened its first Utah location in Pleasant Grove, it held a grand opening event on Tuesday, June 9, according to ABC4 Utah. There, the first guest in line at 10 a.m. was offered one free large Quick Chick of chicken salad per week for an entire year, while the next 99 guests in line were offered one free large Quick Chick per month for a year — a slightly different structure than the straightforward year-of-free-chicken-salad prize being offered to the first 100 guests in Maple Grove.
