When Matt DeMichele-Rigoni opened Boston’s first Chick-fil-A shop in early 2022, his business quickly became a magnet for hungry fans of chicken sandwiches and waffle fries, not to mention all the delivery drivers who serve them.
Now, there will be a break in the action in all that traffic along Boylston Street: DeMichele-Rigoni is closing down the shop at Copley Square at the end of the day on Saturday for two months to make some renovations. But he’s still taking food orders: He just opened a backup location to support deliveries at a CloudKitchens commissary on Shirley Street in Roxbury, where he’s employing around 30 people.
DeMichele-Rigoni has been working for Georgia-based Chick-fil-A in some form for his entire career. He started as a teen working at a Chick-fil-A in New Hampshire, and after graduating college at Southern New Hampshire University, he entered the chain’s leadership development program. He would travel the country, helping with training and franchisee consultations.
Then, he became a franchisee: When he heard that Boston was finally opening itself up for Chick-fil-A (former mayor Tom Menino was famously not a fan), DeMichele-Rigoni jumped at the opportunity to run one so close to where he grew up in Watertown.
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DeMichele-Rigoni said the renovations and the new Roxbury location are aimed at better handling his shop’s popularity and responding to concerns about scooter traffic and double-parking around Copley Square. He hopes to have the shop open again by Thanksgiving, but many deliveries will be handled out of Roxbury; the renovations to the Back Bay location will include a new door specifically for delivery drivers and a retractable canopy for the streetside patio. Eventually, he expects to have 125 workers across both locations. (A separate operator is opening a Chick-fil-A at Logan Airport later this year.)
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DeMichele-Rigoni hopes he has hit on the right recipe to reduce traffic complaints and speed up delivery orders at the same time.
“We want to be good neighbors and figure out ways to make better solutions for the drivers and also the passers-by in the Back Bay,” he said. “We wanted to bring solutions to the table. We found this could be one great way to do it.”
This is an installment of our weekly Bold Types column about the movers and shakers on Boston’s business scene.
Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him @jonchesto.