In 2005, Ed and Alicia Wrazen had chicken wings so dismal, they spent a year developing their own ideal wing and over time, the wing they developed attracted a cult following. Fast forward to 2021 and the Wrazens’ Wingnutz restaurant goes viral internationally thanks to coverage from the wildly popular Pardon My Take podcast.
In addition to becoming a more popular local wing joint, Wingnutz now attracts people from all over the country, even the world. Now, when wing fans come to Buffalo, they often make a beeline for Wingnutz. After solving the problem of making a better chicken wing, the Wrazens had a new problem on their hands: bringing it to scale. Enter A.J. Giordano. The chef and owner of the Munch restaurants partnered with the Wrazens in July 2022 and the company is now taking steps toward everything from retail sales to franchising.
As a first step, Giordano turned his restaurant spaces into Wingnutz, with locations on Niagara Falls Boulevard in Amherst and inside Froth Brewing in North Buffalo. He then converted his Munch operations into catering only.
“The Wingnutz thing kind of fell into my hands, and the brand was just so far ahead compared to what Munch was at that point,” A.J. says. “They went from doing about 1,200 wings a day to where we can do about 1,000 wings an hour, if not a little bit more than that.”
That capacity is vital to meet Wingnutz’ demand, especially during the Bills season.
“When NFL teams that travel well come in to play the Bills, their fans absolutely flood us,” A.J. says. “The week of the Green Bay game, we had a line at our Boulevard location down the street and around the corner. Packers fans were eating wings off the hoods of their cars from the time we opened until the time we closed.”
On a recent visit to Froth, A.J. offered us a wing sampler, something you weirdly can’t get anywhere else. Out of every single flavor we tried, the OG Buffalo wings were the best. But there were a few other flavors that caught our attention. The Wingnutz sauce resembled a sweet-spicy “hot-barbecue” sauce, but with lots of additional baking spice that gave it a whole new dimension. The Honey Sriracha BBQ was a happy surprise with a lot more complexity than your typical barbecue sauce. The Lemon Pepper combined sweet lemon flavor and spicy black pepper. We were also treated to short rib poutine that was a deeply soulful beef and cheese amalgam, contrasted by crispy seasoned fries. We were also given a flight of Froth’s new-school beers, but for traditionalists, the brewery’s amber lager was a great pairing to everything we tried.
A.J. says Wingnutz was born out of an adventurous spirit, and that spirit is going to keep guiding the company moving forward.
“We’re just trying to be creative,” he says. “We don’t want to offer the traditional bar food. Every brewery has their pretzel and a burger. We want to do some cool stuff and be unique.”
If you’re familiar with Munch, that idea of doing bar food that’s a bit different might sound familiar. But don’t get it twisted old school Wingnutz fans, this isn’t a situation of Munch taking over.
“We’re a team, and Ed and Alicia are very much involved in daily operations,” A.J. says. “They just realized that they had something huge and they couldn’t do it alone.”
Hours at time of publishing (Subject to change): Wednesday and Thursday 11 a.m. – 9 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. – 10 p.m., Sunday 11 a.m. – 6 p.m.