Chain Expansion Report

Buffalo Wild Wings, Panera Bread and O'Charley's are among the chain restaurants that announced new development agreements in the previous weeks.

• Buffalo Wild Wings announced an agreement with New York City-based Four M Capital. The deal calls for the opening of 36 units

  in metro New York. The first restaurant is slated to begin operations later this year. In addition, Buffalo Wild Wings signed an 11-unit deal with Randy Schwoerer for new locations in southern Alabama, the Florida Panhandle and portions of the Mississippi coast. The chain also signed a five-store agreement with Luke Strokis and Jim Pappas covering portions of California. The first restaurant opened in March in Rancho Cucamonga.

• Panera Bread announced a development deal with new franchise group Pangenera, LLC. The agreement calls for Pangenera to open 15 new Panera units in California's San Mateo, Santa Cruz and Santa Clara counties by 2010. In addition, the company reached agreements with two existing franchisees to open a total of 16 new restaurants. Trigo Bread Co., owned by Joyce Lunsford, signed an agreement to open six units in Ohio counties that are contiguous with Trigo's current territory in southern Michigan. These units are in addition to the 15 that Trigo had previously agreed to open. Manna Development Group, owned by Paul Saber, initially agreed to open 15 restaurants in northern San Diego. Saber now will open an additional 10 by 2012.

• O'Charley's Inc. announced that it has signed a 50-store franchise development agreement with Covelli Enterprises. The restaurants are to be located in Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. The first of the units is to be opened in 2006, and a minimum of eight restaurants is slated to be in operation by 2007.

• Famous Dave's of America reached an agreement to allow New England Barbecue Ventures to franchise nine restaurants in Connecticut, Maine, western Massachusetts and Vermont over the next six years. Based in Rockport, Maine, New England Barbecue Ventures is owned by Joe Cloutier, a franchisee of 15 Denny's restaurants.