UPDATED — Most parts of Wichita have a Bionic Burger, but Raquel and Jimmy Chavez knew one area was lacking.
“We kind of needed one in the southeast area,” Raquel Chavez says.
So they’re opening their fifth restaurant in the family-owned chain at 3257 E. Harry where a Taco Tico recently closed.
“There’s a lot of people, a lot of activity over there,” Chavez says.
Don Piros of Landmark Commercial Real Estate and Troy Farha of NAI Martens handled the deal.
Raquel Chavez’s parents, Pam and Steve Majors, started the business in 1977.
Chavez and her father had a good-natured fight over dinner the other night when she claimed she started in the business at age 11.
Social Security records proved it was age 12.
In actuality, Chavez says, “I’ve worked in the business all my life.”
She and her husband helped open the last two Bionic Burgers – in Haysville in 2011 and near 21st and Woodlawn in 2010 – while her parents were still in the business. They’re now retired.
The East Harry Bionic Burger will be the first one the Chavezes open on their own. They’d like to grow the company even more.
“We still are looking to expand in different areas.”
Though her parents aren’t at the company day-to-day anymore, Chavez says she can still ask them for advice.
“It’s very nice,” she says.
“I try to do things and figure them out on my own,” Chavez says. She says she thinks her father likes still lending his assistance when she needs it, though.
“He taught me that customers are your number one priority,” Chavez says. They “have helped us make it for 36 years.”
Chavez says the most important thing she learned from her parents helps her run the business as they would.
“They taught me a lot of responsibility and hard work,” she says. “Nothing is going to change.”