The new Cook Out restaurant is open for business in Oakwood, and already folks are coming out in large numbers to devour the eatery’s grilled burgers.
A line inside the restaurant Thursday stretched nearly to the entrance as patrons placed their orders. Situated off Mundy Mill Road, west of Frontage Road and Interstate 985, the new 4,000-square-foot location has already become a hot spot for local people like Felicity Grier and John McCord.
“This is our new place to come now on Thursdays. The food is very good,” Grier said, adding that she appreciates the company’s Christian values as well. “They put Bible verses on the cups, and I respect that.”
Grier goes to the University of North Georgia’s Gainesville campus, while McCord attends Lanier Technical College.
Customers Nicole Thomason and Tim Cyran agreed. Cyran drank a milkshake while Thomason and her granddaughter Ava Worrell, 13 months old, finished their meals.
“We like it,” Cyran said. “It’s a reasonable price too.”
Having opened at the beginning of September, the location in Oakwood involved the conversion of a former, longtime bank known for its white clapboard exterior and brick chimney. The building will also serve as a regional payroll operation.
“Our families are from the area, and we like Oakwood,” said Jeremy Reaves, who along with his father, Morris Reaves, owns the Gainesville and Oakwood locations.
Cook Out, which was founded in the late 1980s in Greensboro, N.C., employs about 35 people at the Oakwood site — 25 in the restaurant and 10 in payroll, Reaves said.
The Oakwood restaurant is the chain’s 20th location in Georgia. The chain also operates in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Maryland.
Cook Out’s first entry in Hall County was a restaurant off Jesse Jewell Parkway in Gainesville south of Ga. 53/John W. Morrow Jr. Parkway.
The new Cook Out is part of a fast-food restaurant boom in Oakwood, with nearby McDonald’s and Burger King getting makeovers and construction of a new Hardee’s, Taco Bell and Steak ’n Shake over the past few years.