Excellent news, fried chicken lovers! Humboldt County’s first Wingstop opened today in Eureka — and it’s already packed to the brim. 

Wingstop, a fast-food joint founded in 1994, has expanded aggressively. They’ve opened over 500 new locations worldwide the last two years and started the process of opening a Eureka location in 2023.

Located on Broadway street, it’s open from 11 a.m. to midnight every day. 

At noon today, barely an hour after opening, every parking spot in the lot (which Wingstop shares with a new Starbucks, at 2411 Broadway Street) was filled and the line inside to order food was backed up almost to the door. Most customers were waiting anywhere from 20 minutes to 45 minutes for their orders, but everyone waiting outside said they expected that to be the case and they didn’t fault the staff for that. 

For some eager Wingstop fanatics, the wait has been excruciating. One employee of a nearby business (who asked to be left unnamed) said she talked to people who had camped outside of the Wingstop overnight.

One customer waiting for his 20-piece boneless wing special, local man Reuben Davis, said he tried to eat at Wingstop every time he was out of town and he was excited when he heard there would be a location opening up in Eureka. 

“It’s nice to have a fried chicken place that’s semi-decent,” Davis said. “It’s nice to have another option here.” 

Kai Lund, another local waiting on 50 wings to share with their friends, said they moved up from Wingstop-heavy Southern California when they were younger. They were overjoyed when they heard one was coming to Eureka. 

“It was like I got my childhood back,” Lund said. 

By Dezmond Remington.

Lund says the main thing they like about Wingstop is the quality of their boneless wings and their customer service. 

The demand for Wingstop, at least during today’s frenzy, was overwhelming the delicate ecosystem of the Starbucks-Wingstop alliance. People were parking in any available space, legal or not, and were whipping through the Starbucks drive-through to get back on the street. A Starbucks employee coloring in a sign asking people not to do that wasn’t too mad, though.

“It’s Wingstop!” she said. “It’s Wingstop in Humboldt. People need it.”