Who invented buffalo wild wings

Buffalo wings are an incredibly popular snack that people love for their tangy flavor and fun factor.

After all, who doesn't love a meal you can eat with your hands while watching a game with your buddies? Wings are one of the most popular party foods, ranking second only to ribs as one of the best things to eat while watching football, according to We Are The Mighty.

Wings have become so popular, it's estimated that Americans can go through about 14 million wings in a year , with the average meat-eating American chowing down on about 24 wings per month.

The following year, it celebrated the opening of its th store. A decade later, B-Dubs, as loyalists call it, had 1, stores, cementing its status as a runaway success during a time in which many mid-level chains were faltering. Today its 1,plus outlets include international locations in Mexico, Central America, the Philippines, and the Middle East. The restaurants have a sports bar-meets-family-dining-chain feel, and are heavily outfitted with TVs and projection screens showing multiple sporting events at once.

A server at the Times Square location noted that patrons there tend to opt for the spicier sauces. It also serves bar food classics like mozzarella sticks, quesadillas, and onion rings. The company laid off an undisclosed number of employees in order to cut costs and also raised its menu prices, something that Riggs says hurt it immensely.

The decline was also at least partially blamed on the dining habits of Those Damned Millennials, leading BWW to experiment with fast-casual.

Way back in ye olden days of , Buffalo Wild Wings admitted they were struggling. They were starting to sell corporate-owned locations off to franchisees, and that's always something of a questionable sign.

But there was good news, too. Arby's had been struggling as well, and in , a new CEO took over and instigated a series of changes. The result was impressive, and by , Arby's was seeing record sales numbers. Those are the same hands that Buffalo Wild Wings passed into, so the hope was that Buffalo Wild Wings would turn around, as well. Customers were immediately hopeful that they'd see some crossover, particularly between Arby's famous horsey sauce and the signature sauces of Buffalo Wild Wings.

Sure enough, by early there was a crossover sauce Pizza and wings go together like peanut butter and jelly, but when Buffalo Wild Wings decided to give pizza a shot, it didn't work out like they'd hoped.

You don't remember their pizza places? That's not surprising. According to Fast Casual , they started with two locations in Minnesota in The restaurants were called PizzaRev, and the idea was basically a sort of Chipotle of pizza. Customers built their own pizza from a series of around 30 toppings, then waited just three minutes while it was baked. But not only were plans to open more restaurants put on hold three years after they opened their doors, but Buffalo Wild Wings then announced in via Bring Me The News that the existing stores were going to be closing.

The problem? They found out quickly that it was possible to have too much of a good thing, and Pie Five Pizza also closed their Minnesota restaurants, also at about the same time.

In , a Buffalo Wild Wings in Massachusetts was the site of a tragic accident. Later, another employee started to scrub the floor with a different cleaner, this one called Super 8. The combination of the two chemicals began to bubble and release toxic fumes. Customers and employees alike evacuated, but when the manager attempted to clean up the mess, he was overcome by the fumes. Manager Ryan Baldera was hospitalized, and later died. So, what happened? The two cleaners were a mix of acid and bleach, and they combined to give off chlorine gas.

That's some serious stuff — it was used as a chemical weapon during World War I, and when it hits the lungs, it creates an even more dangerous mix of chemicals including hydrochloric acid.

This isn't the only case of something like this happening, either. In alone, there were 2, cases of people being exposed to chlorine gas after mixing acid and bleach. Most restaurants give employees safety training, but accidents still occur and sometimes, they're tragic. One of the basic rules of business is that when customers order, they should know exactly what they're ordering and what they can expect to get.

Buffalo Wild Wings has had a chronic problem with that, and in , they announced things were going to change. Originally, customers could place their order for six, 10, 15, 20, or 30 wings. That's pretty straightforward. Then, they changed that ordering system to small, medium, and large.

The reason, says Restaurant Business , was that the wings they were getting varied in size, to the point where some patrons were feeling cheated by small wings. Orders started going out based on weight and sizes of wings, but when one person at the table gets 6 wings and another gets 8 — even though they ordered the same size — that's not going to sit well, either.

Customers were understandably unhappy, and Buffalo Wild Wings announced they were going back to the old way of ordering. They said: " Of course, there will always be slight differences in weights, but our consumers told us they would prefer to have transparency when ordering. In early , a Buffalo Wild Wings location in Kansas found itself in the middle of some terrible headlines.

According to The Kansas City Star , a former employee was suing after he was fired — an action that he says was taken after he reported discrimination and an unsafe, hostile work environment. Former employee Gary Lovelace said that the work environment was "racially hostile," and that they were regularly told to refuse some customers based on race, age, and disability.

Yet the greasy, finger-staining bar-food staple is only 45 years old. On Sept. But how did the spicy snack come about? And why is it served with celery?

The first plate of wings was served in at a family-owned establishment in Buffalo called the Anchor Bar. Except for the occasional naysayer who claims to be the true inventor, these facts are reasonably undisputed.