TriCities.com:
A local restaurant franchisee, Smith is betting his latest venture – Five Guys Burgers and Fries – will be on the menu of hungry shoppers who frequent the commercial center around Interstate 81’s Exit 7. It is the latest in more than a dozen national chain restaurants to open there and more may join them.
All decked out in the company’s traditional red and white checkered motif, the restaurant is set to open Monday in the Linden Square shopping center.
“In the Tri-Cities market, Exit 7 is one of three places that you need to be. It continues to grow and it’s an important part of the market,†Smith said. “I live in Elizabethton, so I only came up here occasionally. But when I did, it was always a traffic jam all the time.â€
A former Taco Bell franchisee, Smith opened his first Five Guys last year in Kingsport and followed that with a Johnson City store in September 2009.
