Business

Buffalo Wild Wings gets final Health Department approval

BARBARAELLEN KOCH PHOTO | Buffalo Wild Wings has received final approval from the Suffolk County Department of Health Services, a public relations spokesperson said.
BARBARAELLEN KOCH PHOTO | Buffalo Wild Wings has received final approval from the Suffolk County Department of Health Services, a public relations spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Buffalo Wild Wings has received final approval from the Suffolk County Department of Health Services, public relations director Grace Kelly-McGovern said — ostensibly meaning the Riverhead restaurant could open this week.

“SCDHS received the as-built plan for the subject site and issued final approval for Buffalo Wild Wings,” Ms. Kelly-McGovern wrote in an e-mail Tuesday afternoon.

Earlier this month, she said it was her understanding that once the final documentation for Buffalo Wild Wings had been submitted by the shopping center’s owner, the restaurant would be able to open right away.

“As soon as we get those papers they’ll be good to go,” she had said.

An employee for the Route 58 franchise, located in a shopping center just east of Riverhead Raceway, said today there is “no update” as to when the casual eatery will make its debut.

The restaurant had originally been scheduled to open Dec. 9, though the day came and went without any explanation from the restaurant.

At the beginning of the month, Ms. Kelly-McGovern said Buffalo Wild Wing’s neighbors in the plaza — Dick’s Sporting Goods, Aldi, Christmas Tree Shops and Five Below — were all operating without final approval. The shopping plaza’s developer, Saber-Riverhead LLC,  incurred a $10,000 fine for doing so, she said.

It was unclear Tuesday afternoon whether those stores have also received final approval from the Health Department.

Unlike the other stores in the plaza, executives at Buffalo Wild Wings chose not to open the Riverhead location until everything was “100 percent right,” the Riverhead restaurant’s manager Andrew Schuett said earlier this month.

Mr. Schuett had said some employees had been assigned to other locations for training while the restaurant waited to open.

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