Wing Bowl champ's restaurant plans taking flight
Five-time Wing Bowl winner Bill "El Wingador" Simmons has a hunger for the restaurant biz. He announced plans and partners.
Carly Q. Romalino
WEST DEPTFORD - A five-time Wing Bowl champ didn't lose his appetite in prison.
In fact, Bill "El Wingador" Simmons developed a hunger for more than wings.
An announcement Thursday puts his own family recipes for fried and grilled chicken, mac and cheese, onion rings and fries on the menu of his next project, a "fast-casual" chicken joint.
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Simmons hinted at a restaurant project in a February interview with the Courier-Post.
The Woodbury Heights wing-devouring giant formally announced restaurant plans and a $25,000 Kickstarter campaign on 94WIP sports radio Thursday.
Simmons — with partners Joe Vallee, co-author of the wing champ's memoir "Snow On the Barbed Wire," and Bob Silzle, a former McDonald's executive involved in the Five Guys chain — has just 60 days on Kickstarter to raise $25,000 for the restaurant, El Wingador's.
That money would go to developing a logo and launching the restaurant's website.
The three partners have committed to raise $600,000 to build the first location in the Philadelphia area.
Earlier this year, Vallee told the Courier-Post the trio had scouted locations in Delaware County, Pa.
Simmons hopes El Wingador's restaurants will be a place "you'll want to visit at least two times a week," he said in a video posted to his Kickstarter page.
As El Wingador, Simmons became the king of competitive eating, reigning as Wing Bowl champ starting in 1999.
He hasn't competed since 2012, the same year he was arrested on cocaine possession and distribution charges.
He served his sentence from 2013 to 2015 in Southern State Correctional Facility.
Carly Q. Romalino; (856) 486-2476; cromalino@gannettnj.com
