New chicken wing place will ‘be a great fit’ for Rolling Meadows, owner says

Wing Ding — serving the drummettes and flats of fried fowl in a variety of homemade sauces — is planning to open along the Algonquin Road commercial corridor in Rolling Meadows.

The business, set to move into the vacant one-story office building at 1911 Algonquin Road, received approval of a liquor license from the city council this week allowing it to sell beer and wine alongside wings and other food.

The core menu will feature wings — both traditional and boneless — in addition to chicken sandwiches, chicken fried pork chop meals, burgers and an assortment of homemade sauces and sides.

“We are very excited about the opportunity to join the Rolling Meadows community,” owner Demitri Kontogiannis wrote in a letter to Mayor Lara Sanoica. “After careful review of the area, we believe a ‘wing place’ would be a great fit for this location and amenity to the surrounding area.”

Kontogiannis said he plans to be a long-term tenant of the 1,800-square-foot building, which has been empty since an insurance business left a few years ago. He’s spending about $300,000 on renovations.

It’s because of that investment that Kontogiannis also asked the mayor and aldermen for permission to allow video gambling as an accessory use. He said he already has a spot for the machines in his store layout.

But at least to start, city officials have balked at the request.

“The council wants to see viable restaurants in town. We want restaurants to be successful,” said Alderman Nick Budmats. “But we don’t want them to be solely successful based on the fact that they’re gaming.”

Budmats said he’d be willing to support Wing Ding’s request for a Class GA license — which allows video gambling as an accessory to food service — but only after the primary restaurant business gets up and running and is successful.

“Others have come to town wanting to be a restaurant and then actually never amounted to much as a restaurant and became gaming facilities almost solely,” Budmats said, “and that’s what we’re looking to avoid.”

Kontogiannis said he planned to tap into social media, direct mailers, and business-to-business outreach to capture customers and drive traffic to the store.

He’ll hire up to five employees: two cooks, another doing prep, someone working the register, and another person to make deliveries.

An opening date wasn’t announced.