Joella’s Hot Chicken coming to Westfield’s south side

The Joella’s Hot Chicken chain will open a restaurant in a former Westfield beauty salon later this year to heat up the Cool Creek Commons shopping center.

The state’s fourth Joella’s, at 2554 E. 146th St., just east of Carmel’s Clay Terrace, is expected to open in late April in a portion of the former Beauty Brands Salon. Joella’s first Indiana location opened at 4715 E. 96th St. in Indianapolis in 2016, and two more have opened since then, in Broad Ripple and Bloomington.

“This location is really modeled after our higher-volume restaurants in Louisville, Kentucky,” Christina Happel, regional vice president of operations for Joella’s, said.

As such, the chicken chain will offer patrons indoor and outdoor seating to enjoy chicken that’s brined and spiced with six heat levels, as well as an assortment of Southern sides. The restaurant also offers alternative options for no heat, no meat and no gluten.

The Westfield restaurant will occupy more than 4,100 square feet of the former salon’s nearly 6,000 square feet. Indianapolis-based Kite Realty Group Trust, which manages the 124,000-square-foot Cool Creek, did not immediately respond to questions about the remainder of that space.

A majority of the 65 to 70 new jobs created by the new location will be part-time, Happel said. The remaining 30% will be full-time.

The Louisville-based chicken chain currently operates 15 locations across Kentucky, Ohio, Florida, Georgia and Indiana. Between September and December of 2019, Happel said, Joella’s took over seven leases previously held by Pollo Tropical in Florida and Georgia.

Schulte Restaurant Group, which owns Joella’s, announced in July its plans to double the chicken chain’s size with its expansion in the Midwest and Southeast.

“We’ve kind of seeded ourselves,” Happel said. “Right now, we’re at a place where we want to start spiderwebbing out into our existing market to kind of get a bigger reach in our five states.”