Just a little over a year after opening their first restaurant on Dickson Street, the Feltner brothers will soon be expanding to midtown.
Owners Travis, Chase, and Grant Feltner, the grandsons of the founder of the famous Feltner’s Whatta-Burger in Russelville, announced this week that they will be opening a second location at 2768 N. College Avenue, across from Adventure Subaru.
According to Travis, the new location will feature the same menu as Feltner Brothers on Dickson Street, which offers burgers, hot dogs, fries and onion rings.
“We’re going to continue to focus on what we know how to do,” he said. “It’s a bigger space, but we’re going to try and replicate what we’ve established (on Dickson Street).”
The 1,500-square-foot building on College Avenue will almost double the seating capacity of the current restaurant, which, counting the 24-seat patio, can accommodate about 63 people.
“We’ll be able to seat around 104 people over there 365 days a year, with 64 seats inside, and an additional 40 seats on our patio that we’ll be able to enclose, and get some heaters out there in the winter,” said Feltner.
The extra space will also allow for something that he has been getting a lot of requests for lately; milkshakes.
“Everybody has really been wanting milkshakes at this location,” he said. “We had to choose between milkshakes and beer on Dickson, but the new place will still serve bottle and can beers, and we’ll have room to do milkshakes, too.”
Milkshakes and the potential for more customers weren’t the only things that made the College Avenue location attractive to Feltner, however.
“You can look at the building and see one of the most obvious reasons that it’s ideal; the huge parking lot in front of it,” he said. “That was definitely something we were looking for.”
Feltner, who has been vocal in opposition to the paid parking initiative on Dickson Street in the past, admitted that the program did play into the decision to open another location.
“We’ve always wanted a second store on that side of town, and we wanted it on College,” he said. “It’s not because of paid parking, but it would be kind of stupid to say that the changes on Dickson Street had nothing to do with it. We think it has limited our potential down here, and that definitely sped the decision to expand up a little bit.”
He was quick to emphasize that the new restaurant is an expansion, not a re-location.
“It’s a second location,” he said. “This one’s not going anywhere.”
Extensive renovations of the building are already underway, and Feltner said he is hopeful that the second store will be open by early summer, with an expected opening date of June 1.
“We’re excited, and we think we’ll be able to serve a lot more families over there,” he said. “You look at the building, and it just screams ‘Old fashioned burger joint.'”
