Waldo’s Chicken & Beer announced Wednesday that it will be opening its new Little Rock location in the Breckenridge Village shopping center (10301 N. Rodney Parham Rd., Suite B1) on Tuesday, June 4.
This will be the company’s fourth Arkansas outpost, which are all owned and operated by the Keet family’s JTJ Restaurants. Mark Waldo opened the first Waldo’s in Nashville, Tennessee’s Germantown neighborhood in 2019.
The new 6,000 square-foot store has 150 seats and is described in the press release as a sports bar concept. It features an indoor and outdoor bar, and patrons will have the opportunity to shoot pool, throw darts and play shuffleboard, pinball, ping pong and Golden Tee (an arcade-style golf game).
Waldo’s is known for its fast casual service, but Ben Brainard, a partner in the project, said they saw an opportunity with the Breckenridge Village shopping center location to “expand into a sports bar setting where guests can dine in.” Waldo’s menu features both Southern fried and rotisserie chicken and several scratch-made sides, including mac and cheese, white beans, collard greens, potato wedges and coleslaw.
The multimillion dollar renovation of the Breckenridge complex was announced in 2022 after a new ownership group comprised of The Kelley Group, the Keet Family, Dale V. “Bo” Briggs, the Nashville-based Bodnar Group and others purchased the property. Jim Keet, chairman of JTJ Restaurants, said at the time that the group planned to “bring back the glory days of Breckenridge and revitalize it with a diverse combination of restaurants and other retail spaces.”
Waldo’s is the first of the new restaurants to open in the shopping center. Others announced for the complex include a second location for The Root Cafe and Hot Springs’ DeLuca’s Pizzeria, as well as a new taproom for Flyway Brewing. Mt. Fuji, a tenant of the shopping center since the mid-1980s, is still a part of Breckenridge. It reopened in November in a newly-designed 3,600 square-foot space behind the former Greenhaw’s Men’s Wear in the same building as the Loony Bin Comedy Club.
The March 31, 2023, tornado that hit Central Arkansas did significant damage to the complex. The Eat My Catfish branch in Breckenridge Village suffered the worst of the damage and wasn’t able to reopen until January. The microburst storm that swept through West Little Rock in September 2023 also hit the shopping center, causing further setbacks.
The Keet family opened Arkansas’s first Waldo’s outlet on Warden Road in North Little Rock in March 2022. A Little Rock location on Bass Pro Drive opened in February 2023, and a Bentonville store opened earlier this year. The Keets also operate two Waldo’s stores in Oklahoma, 10 Tazikis’s Mediterranean Cafes across Arkansas and Oklahoma, Petit & Keet in Little Rock, and Cypress Social in North Little Rock. The Keets have also partnered with Mt. Fuji, Count Porkula, Big Bad Breakfast and City Silo.