FedEx pilot and Staks Kitchen franchisee Nick Bolander has gotten back to the days of his youth with two new restaurant ventures this year.

The Midwest native opened the Collierville Staks in March and plans an Arlington location that should open by mid-April.

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“When I was 15, 16 years old, we had some family friends who owned restaurants,” he said. “I did everything from washing dishes to working on the cook line to doing some serving and bartending. So I’ve always enjoyed the camaraderie and the feeling of the energy in a restaurant.”

The Arlington Staks will be the sixth location for the concept. Construction is underway at The Shops at Arlington Village retail center on the southeast corner of Airline Road and Milton Wilson Boulevard.

The restaurant is going in the previous Posh Lighting location at 5226 Airline Road. Posh’s main store is in Jackson, Tennessee, and the owners opened the Arlington store as a secondary location.

“I believe (the Posh owners) just decided there wasn’t enough traffic yet. I told them I thought they were being a little premature since development has really started to ramp up around there,” Arlington Chamber Director Tonia Howell said.

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This year the south side of the intersection of Airline Road and Milton Wilson Boulevard has seen the opening of a new Baptist emergency department and medical office complex as well as several new restaurant and business openings. The long-awaited Kroger is also under construction next to where the new Staks will sit.

Mixed-use projects like the $100 million Providence Place and the $700 million Hawthorne will also be developed in the coming years.

“There’s a lot of projected growth south of I-40 also. The town is extending the sewer over there so that’s going to open up some property,” Howell said. “So that part of town is going to look a lot different five years from now.”

Staks has four locations in the Memphis area, including the flagship East Memphis restaurant, Germantown, Collierville and Southaven. There is also one in Auburn, Alabama. Founder Brice Bailey owns the East Memphis, Germantown and Southaven restaurants.

“Arlington’s a growing community, and we’re hoping to grow along with it,” said Bolander, who lives in Collierville. “It will be easy for my general manager and staff to service both locations since they’re within 20 miles of one another.”

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Arlington will be the first Staks to open with evening hours, with more of a bar and grill menu. Bolander touts their from-scratch kitchen.

“All of our chicken comes in fresh, and we batter it when it’s ordered, then fry it or grill it,” he said.

The concept, which Bailey created in 2015, was originally known as Staks Pancake Kitchen before rebranding to Staks Kitchen.

“We’re trying to get away from the whole ‘all we do is breakfast,’ because we’re open (for) lunches, and now we’re going to be open in the evenings,” said Bolander, whose Collierville location could expand to evening hours by next spring, he said. “But in the evenings, we won’t serve breakfast.”

The new Staks will also feature a covered front patio that will be heated in the winter.

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Bolander, who grew up in the Omaha, Nebraska, area, also owns the Staks franchise rights to the Omaha and Lincoln, Nebraska markets, so future expansion could happen there.

But first he would like to add at least one more location in this region, with Huntsville, Alabama, or Jackson, Tennessee, top possibilities at the moment.