Former Pizza Hut building at Central and Tyler getting a new, familiar restaurant tenant

The former Pizza Hut building in Westlink Shopping Center that most recently was home to a short-lived T’Geaux Cajun restaurant is about to get a new tenant.

By the end of the year, a new Chick N Max restaurant should be operating at 8977 W. Central, said a spokesperson for the locally based chain. It’ll be a franchised restaurant owned and operated by Rusty Rathbun’s Leghorn Development LLC.

Construction should start within 45 days.

The new restaurant will have 2,500 square feet and will be able to seat 50 to 60 people. It’ll also feature a double drive through that will have one lane designated for traditional on-site ordering and the other for people who order in advance online.

Rathbun, best known for bringing the Subway franchise to Kansas in 1987, signed a development deal with Chick N Max in April. He agreed to develop 25 Chick N Max locations throughout Kansas over the next 10 years, and he plans to open three of those himself. He’s searching for franchise partners to open the rest. Five to seven of them will be in the Wichita area.

As of now, Wichita has three company-owned Chick N Max restaurants — at 3520 N. Maize Road, 352 S. West St. and 5510 E. Central.

Chick N Max, which was founded by Max Sheets in 2017, announced in early 2021 its plans to start franchising the restaurant concept, and by November of last year, it’d signed an agreement with a franchisee in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, who is working on a “three-pack” of restaurants for that city. A franchised restaurant also is in the works in Houston, where multi-unit development deals have been signed, and Sheets is also discussing possible deals in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Phoenix.

The former Pizza Hut building that Chick N Max is taking over held Joseph Fowler’s T’Geaux Cajun from November 2021 until early 2022. Before that, he operated the space as another location of his Electric Pizzeria.