Kevin Kelley’s Kitchen + Cocktails, the elevated Southern comfort food concept known for crafted “kocktails” and signature “Welcome Home” hospitality, is opening its ninth location at 7 Times Square in New York City this fall. In just six short years, Kelley, a litigation attorney, has had a meteoric rise in the restaurant industry, launching his first upscale eatery in Dallas in 2020 during the pandemic. The Dallas location performed so well that Kelley has since opened locations in Chicago, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Charlotte, Philadelphia, and Miami, with New York and Boston on the way.
But the fast-growing restaurant brand really began with a grandmother’s love. Born in Arkansas and raised in Texas, Kelley learned to cook at age seven at his grandmother’s side. She taught him that food is an important way you show people that they matter.
Forty years later, that lesson has become one of the most talked-about dining brands in America. Kitchen + Kocktails by Kevin Kelley is landing in Times Square. The 10,000-square-foot space at the corner of 42nd Street, Broadway, and Seventh Avenue (formerly home to Pink Taco), will be the largest, most visible location in the brand’s history. And it was built the same way every other location was: without outside investors, without a franchise model, and without compromising a single thing that made it worth building in the first place.
For more information, visit https://www.kitchenkocktailsusa.com/nyc.
Nsenga K. Burton, Ph.D., founder & editor-in-chief of The Burton Wire, curated this post. Follow The Burton Wire on Instagram @TheBurtonWire or Meta @ The Burton Wire.
