by Max Marbut
Staff Writer
When the Landing management announced that a Fuddruckers hamburger restaurant franchise was going to open in the space previously occupied by Musicland, they also announced the restaurant would be open for business by the time the Jaguars played their first home game in September.
In September, they said the design phase of the project was taking longer than expected and the opening date had been pushed back to October.
This week, David Farmer, who owns the Fuddruckers franchise rights for the Landing location and seven others, said construction will begin next week and he expects to be serving burgers by the middle of March.
“We’re moving slowly but surely. We’re having typical construction problems and [we’re] waiting on the final permits,” he said, adding part of the delay was caused when some of the plumbing in the ceiling had to be repaired.
“The Landing replaced all the plumbing under the food court,” said Farmer. “They came in and took care of everything.”
He said the building’s architecture has also added some time to the design process.
“We want to make sure we get it right,” said Farmer. “It’s not a square space – it turns with the Landing, so there are some special things we have to accommodate.”
Larry Fletcher, vice president of franchise operations at Fuddruckers corporate headquarters in Austin, Texas, also said the shape of the space at the Landing is different from other units . He added it’s not uncommon for it to take nine months to get a unit open after the design has been approved.
He also said when Fuddruckers started franchising 26 years ago, there wasn’t much diversity in terms of layout and the design was consistent from location to location.
“We had a big growth spurt in the last couple of years,” said Fletcher. “Now we have a lot of locations in airports, malls and casinos. Our restaurants can be anywhere from 300 square feet to over 6,000 square feet. In the last year and a half, we’ve developed lots of non-traditional sites. We will design to pretty much any size or footprint.”
Fuddruckers also has two decor packages. There is the original “rock and roll” theme and a new design Fletcher called “the smart look.”
“It has a lot of dark wood and different lighting. It works well for big-city markets,” he said.
Farmer said there were two reasons he chose the newer design for the Landing.
“It’s more of a ‘loft’ look. There won’t be any carpet and we’ll have stained-concrete floors. It’s going to be Fuddruckers, but Downtown Jacksonville-style,” he said. “It’s also a much more open plan, and we wanted that to accommodate the volume of business we’re expecting.”