‘A little bit of Winter Garden is gone:’ Maryland Fried Chicken closes after 57-year run

WINTER GARDEN, Fla. – It’s an finish of an period for one historic rooster spot after it determined to close its doorways for the final time originally of April.

Maryland Fried Hen, positioned in Winter Backyard on West Colonial Drive, shut down Saturday. Traces of individuals had been noticed with every individual seeking to get the final little bit of well-known rooster.

“Nicely, my spouse, I had forgotten, my spouse texted me saying you bought to go by Maryland Fried, you recognize it’s April 1st, and it’s not an April Fools’ joke,” Mike Plante mentioned.

Information 6 was there because the rooster joint closed down the drive-thru and rang up its final buyer.

“We bought out… of the whole lot,” mentioned the cashier who needed to wave off different individuals nonetheless attempting to get in.

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“A bit of little bit of Winter Backyard is gone,” Plante mentioned. “You already know it’s been right here a long-time.”

Plante tells Information 6 he has been right here because the restaurant’s early days, saying it grew to become a staple on the town. Since 1966, the fried rooster store gained loyal clients over its 57-year run – clients like Plante.

He mentioned, “You already know it’s type of miserable, you recognize would possibly lose some weight now, you recognize it was type of my Sunday repair.”

The lack of the historic eatery affecting employees, many have been working on the restaurant for years.

Jessica Whigham, a shift-manager at Maryland Fried Hen, mentioned, “Like my cashiers that I work with are like my sisters. My mother is the overall supervisor – everybody calls her mother – this place has been household, our clients are like household and it’s going to be actually unhappy.”

Whigham says they’ve been 3 times busier since saying they had been closing. She mentioned, “We had clients lined up across the Culver’s constructing and round 50.”

The long-time shift supervisor says the shop determined to close down after it was bought throughout the top of the Covid-pandemic.

“I feel it’d’ve been a bit overwhelming for everybody, you recognize the locations the place we get our meals from and you recognize everybody right here,” Whigham mentioned.

Plante says whereas individuals could also be saddened by the restaurant’s closing, it does make approach for progress saying, that Winter Backyard is rising in leaps and bounds.

“Typically individuals don’t like change, so with progress hopefully it’s all for the perfect,” Plante mentioned.

For Whigham, she says going ahead, she needed to depart this message, she mentioned, “We’re sorry, we love our clients, and we love our group… this isn’t goodbye, okay, that is we’ll goodbye.”

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