Chicken tenders fans, rejoice, as Lake Nona’s latest restaurant now is open — this one a still relatively new concept for Central Florida.
Tampa-based PDQ — which specializes in fresh fast food and hand-breaded chicken tenders — on Aug. 20 opened its 3,300-square-foot, 110-seat eatery with drive-thru and patio seating at 11906 Narcoossee Road, south of State Road 417. About 75 employees were hired for this location, which is the first of several planned restaurants in the $100 million Lake Nona Landing shopping center.
The newest PDQ in Central Florida is in the southeast Orlando community of Lake Nona.
See the photo gallery for a closer look at the new Lake Nona eatery.
And there’s more on the way, as PDQ reportedly is targeting Winter Park and southwest Orange County’s Hunters Creek neighborhood for its next local markets, sources said. The chain also is hunting for sites in Oviedo, Ocoee and near Orlando Fashion Square mall in downtown Orlando, but nothing has been confirmed. Cindy Schooler of SRS Real Estate Partners, who handles tenant representation for PDQ in Central Florida, declined to comment.
This is the third Orlando-area location for PDQ — which stands for People Dedicated to Quality. It started here in 2015 in Sanford and then opened in Clermont in May, as Orlando Business Journal previously reported.
Meanwhile, the new Lake Nona restaurant is a welcome addition to the 17-square-mile southeast Orlando community, which already boasts more than 11,000 residents, 5,000 workers in the 650-acre Medical City life sciences hub and more than 7,000 students in its schools. That further boosts the need for more restaurants in the area to support the growing population.
Here’s a closer look at other new restaurants that earlier this year debuted nearby:
- Keke’s Breakfast Cafe opened a 5,100-square-foot, 150-seat eatery at 9723 Narcoossee Road on Aug. 31 in the Eagle Creek Center shopping plaza. The complex is across the street from the south entrance to Lake Nona’s Laureate Park neighborhood. Learn more on the Keke’s Lake Nona Facebook page.
- Miami-based organic restaurant Grown— owned by two-time NBA champion Ray Allen and his wife, Shannon — opened in mid June inside the Walmart Supercenter in Lake Nona Landing.
- Bosphorous Turkish Cuisine in the spring opened a 3,818-square-foot eatery — its second Orlando-area restaurant — on the ground floor of the office building in the Lake Nona Town Center’s $70 million first phase.
- Pig Floyd’s Urban Barbakoa opened a 2,000-square-foot, 80-seat eatery in late March in the Lake Nona Village shopping complex on Narcoossee Road, its second Orlando location. Pig Floyd’s is a finalist for OBJ’s 2017 Readers’ Choice best barbecue restaurant category top spot.