Cincinnati’s Clifton area welcomed its first Chick-fil-A restaurant on Thursday, October 22, as the new location at 198 E. McMillan St. in Corryville opened its doors at 6:30 a.m. The restaurant, near the University of Cincinnati, will serve guests Monday through Saturday from 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., offering dine-in, drive-thru, carry-out, third-party delivery and catering.
The opening is a homecoming for local owner-operator Kevin Lopez, who was selected by Chick-fil-A, Inc. to run the Clifton restaurant. Lopez began his career in Cincinnati in 2012 with Teach For America, teaching just blocks from the new restaurant, and he and his wife are now returning to the city, which is her hometown.
Lopez worked as a kindergarten and first-grade lead teacher at Impact Academy, a public charter elementary school in Cincinnati, from 2012 to 2014, according to the company and his professional biography. He then spent four years in a corporate sales role at Procter & Gamble before becoming a Chick-fil-A owner-operator in Philadelphia in 2023.
In a company statement, Lopez said Cincinnati is where he first began to understand how deeply opportunity can shape a person’s future, and that during his time with Teach For America he saw that education, access to meaningful employment and basic needs such as food all help strengthen a community. He said he is grateful for the opportunity to create jobs, develop team members and serve guests in the years ahead.
To mark the opening, Chick-fil-A, Inc. is donating $45,000 to support hunger relief in the greater Cincinnati community. The company said $25,000 will go to Feeding America to benefit Freestore Foodbank, with $10,000 each going to Our Daily Bread and to Last Mile Food Rescue, two Cincinnati organizations that work to get food to neighbors in need.
Ahead of opening day, Chick-fil-A and several Cincinnati-area operators volunteered at Our Daily Bread, a soup kitchen in Over-the-Rhine, serving nearly 600 meals. The new Clifton restaurant will also take part in the Chick-fil-A Shared Table program, in which Last Mile Food Rescue coordinates collection and delivery of surplus food from the restaurant to Our Daily Bread. The company said the addition of the Clifton location brings the Shared Table program to 100 percent participation among Chick-fil-A restaurants in the Cincinnati area.
For opening day, the restaurant invited guests to celebrate in cow attire, offering a free entree or kids meal on Thursday to guests dressed in a cow costume or wearing a cow-spotted accessory. With a location on a busy McMillan Street corridor serving both the Clifton neighborhood and the university community, the restaurant is expected to draw students, nearby residents and commuters alike in its first weeks.
Photo: Mark Turnauckas, CC BY-SA