Buffalo Wild Wings flying north for expansion

Buffalo Wild Wings, the fast-growing St. Louis Park-based chicken-wing chain, said Wednesday it plans to expand into Canada, its first foreign market.

The company plans to open 50 restaurants in the next five years in Ontario and Canada's western provinces. The first two locations will open in spring 2011 in suburban Toronto, where Buffalo Wild Wings will initially focus.

Buffalo Wild Wings' long-term plans call for 100 restaurants in Canada, with the second 50 slated for Quebec and the country's Maritime Provinces, said Mo Sawda, the company's senior vice president for franchise development.

The Canadian restaurants will be a mix of company-owned and franchised outlets, as they are in this country. Buffalo Wild Wings has 680 restaurants in the United States, adding more than 90 in 2009.

Sawda says the company is considering overseas expansion in its longer-term plans. Buffalo Wild Wings executives have visited the United Kingdom and Germany for an initial look at those markets.

Buffalo Wild Wings, which features a sports bar and grill motif and a wing-centric menu, has been one of the hotter U.S. restaurant concepts in recent years. Its steady rollout of new restaurants helped it blow through Wall Street's second-quarter sales and profit expectations last month.

MIKE HUGHLETT