Waldo’s Chicken & Beer, a growing fast-casual restaurant chain with locations in eight states, opens its second Birmingham-area restaurant today on Montgomery Highway in Vestavia Hills.

Alabama native Mark Waldo, who grew up in Homewood and graduated from the University of Alabama, is the founder and CEO of Waldo’s, which, since its founding in Nashville in 2019, has grown to 25 locations.

Casey Atherton, the owner-operator for the first Birmingham-area Waldo’s in Cahaba Heights and the new one on Montgomery Highway, also plans to open a third location in Pelham later this summer.

Waldo’s serves fried and rotisserie chicken — from tenders and wings to sandwiches and salads – as well as a selection of made-from-scratch sides and a variety of craft beers and cocktails.

The Vestavia Hills location of Waldo’s is at 1463 Montgomery Highway in a new retail center that includes the third Birmingham-area location of Big Bad Breakfast, which opens Tuesday.

Before you go, here are a few things to know about Waldo’s founder and CEO and the brand that, somewhat reluctantly, bears his name.

Growing up in Homewood

The son of a pediatrician and a dentist, Mark Waldo got his first paying job at 14, tuning concertinas for musician Bob Tedrow at Homewood Musical Instruments.

“I used to ride my bike to Homewood Musical Instruments,” Waldo remembers. “The concept of having a job, working with Bob, and going home with a lot of cash in my hand was like really cool. It immediately resonated.”

Later, he got his first taste of the restaurant business busing tables, washing dishes and sweeping floors at various Jim ‘N Nick’s Bar-B-Q locations around Birmingham.

After earning his business degree from the University of Alabama in 2008, Waldo helped a friend build, open and manage The Bear Trap, a bar and grill on the Strip in Tuscaloosa.

“I ran that for about two years and then realized that I didn’t need to be in the bar business for the rest of my life,” he says.

From Tuscaloosa, Waldo moved to New Orleans, where he worked for the Hillstone Restaurant Group at a Houston’s restaurant in the Crescent City.

“Those guys were the most organized group of restaurant operators I’ve ever worked with in my life — the attention to detail, organization, commitment to excellence,” Waldo says. “I really learned a lot from those guys about what the most important things in the hospitality industry are.”

Waldo later left the restaurant business, though, to sell medical devices for a New Orleans start-up company, a job that led him to Nashville, where he started his own business selling medical equipment.

Chasing pigs in Eva

About 10 years ago, he returned to the food-and-beverage industry, joining Fresh Hospitality group — whose restaurant brands include Martin’s Bar-B-Que Joint, Taziki’s Mediterranean Café and Big Bad Breakfast — to work at their Fatback Pig Project pork farm and processing plant in the small town of Eva in North Alabama.

“I drove from Nashville, went to Eva, saw what was going on, and it was chaotic, without a doubt,” he recalls. “But I really saw a great opportunity, and more importantly, I really liked the guys that owned it and the hospitality group behind it.

“I said, ‘Look, if I gotta start working with these guys chasing pigs around in the middle of the morning in Eva, Ala., so be it.’”

In 2017, Fresh Hospitality later sent Waldo to Morgantown, W. Va., to open and manage a fast-casual chicken restaurant concept they called Two Birds in the student union building on the West Virginia University campus.

“That was the first iteration of what is now Waldo’s,” he says. “The two birds were fried chicken and rotisserie chicken. We went into that little food court, and the kids immediately resonated with it.”

The Aramark food service company later bought the food court, and Waldo returned to Nashville with the thought of opening a Two Birds in the Music City.

Coming up with the name

After receiving a cease-and-desist order from a California restaurant company that had trademarked the name Two Birds, Waldo had to come up with a new name for his chicken business.

His partners at Fresh Hospitality suggested Waldo’s.

“I really didn’t want a namesake brand because this is not my brand,” Waldo says. “It’s our brand, right? It’s my partners’ brand. It’s my investors’ brand, our employees’ brand.

“I did think it was a catchy name, and I did think it was memorable,” he adds. “So, I relented.

“But what we’re not going to do is have my bust up on the wall and have a picture of me with flour all over my apron on the home screen of the web page because that’s not who I am.”

Dealing with adversity

The first Waldo’s Chicken & Beer opened in Nashville’s Germantown area in 2019, and about six months later, the second-deadliest tornado event in Tennessee history ripped through the area.

The tornado tore a hole in the restaurant’s roof, but two days later, Waldo’s reopened.

“Our parking lot was taped off with caution tape because the building next door was a collapse hazard,” Waldo remembers. “But we really wanted to be open because a whole community was hurting.”

Then came the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Once again, we really learned a lot about who our team was and who we were as a business and what it was like to deal with adversity,” Waldo says.

Coming home to Alabama

Later, after Waldo’s opened a second location in the Nashville suburb of Cool Springs, a young man walked into the restaurant, introduced himself to Waldo and told him he was going to be the operating partner of the first Waldo’s in Birmingham.

It was Casey Atherton, who grew up in Hoover and, after working as a director of operations for a Chick-fil-A franchise in Nashville, was looking for an opportunity to move back home.

“He just walked in my dining room one day and said, ‘I’m gonna be your new operating partner in Birmingham, Ala,’” Waldo remembers. “I said, ‘I got bad news for you. You’ve got a six-month job interview because we’re about to open a store in Franklin. I’m gonna make you run it, and we’ll see what you’re made of.’”

Atherton aced his audition and moved back to Birmingham, opening the Cahaba Heights Waldo’s in August 2022.

“I love somebody that likes to point their own compass,” Waldo says of his Birmingham operating partner. “I had a good feeling immediately that he was the right guy.”

In addition to its two metro Birmingham locations, Waldo’s also has restaurants in Auburn and Dothan. The Pelham location should open sometime this summer.

About that chicken and beer

The Waldo’s menu features chicken just about any way a guest might want it – from wings to tenders, on sandwiches and in salads, fried and slow-roasted, by the plate or by the bucket – as well as a selection of scratch-made sides that include collard greens, mac and cheese, tomato-cucumber salad, coleslaw and french fries.

“There are a lot of folks out there doing chicken, and there are new ones joining every single day,” Waldo says. “In my mind, there are a lot of things that set us apart. We make everything from scratch every day. The only things we don’t make in-house are the ketchup and the mayonnaise. . . .

“We call ourselves full-service chicken in a fast-casual setting,” he adds. “So, we’ve got wings. We’ve got bone-in. We’ve got rotisserie chicken. We’ve got fried tenders and fried sandwiches. We also have rotisserie sandwiches. We’ve got salads.”

The second half of Waldo’s name is “Beer,” and the selection of about 20 local and regional beers – including brews from Birmingham’s Good People Brewing Company, Cahaba Brewing Company and Avondale Brewing Company, among others – changes weekly.

In addition to beer, Waldo’s offers wine and a cocktail menu that includes everything from a Bloody Mary to a Tennessee Mule, margaritas to mimosas, as well as Waldo’s signature Spiked Slushies.

Art with a sense of humor

While they come for the chicken and beer, guests at Waldo’s enjoy gazing at the playful pop art that decorates the restaurant walls.

There’s a riff on that famous Bo Jackson Nike advertisement, but instead of holding a baseball bat over his shoulder pads, it’s a chicken.

And there’s another that plays off that classic Paul “Bear” Bryant photo that appeared on the cover of Time magazine, but instead of designing plays on a chalkboard, Bryant is drawing chickens.

Other pieces feature scenes from “The Godfather,” “Pulp Fiction” and “The Dark Knight,” as well as such musicians as Johnny Cash, Jimi Hendrix, Michael Jackson and Willie Nelson – all of which are infused with a little chicken humor.

The art is the clever work of Waldo’s college buddy, Will Denniston.

“He’s an old friend of mine, and he’s a really talented painter,” Waldo says. “When we started opening restaurants, I called him and said, ‘Hey, man, I need some artwork.’’’

And, of course, there’s a “Where’s Waldo?”-inspired piece of art, too.

Waldo’s Chicken & Beer opens today at 1463 Montgomery Highway in Vestavia Hills. The phone is 205-947-1252. For more information, go here.

Waldo’s Chicken & Beer has another location at 3009 Pump House Road, Suite 110, in Cahaba Heights. The phone is 205-635-0002. For more information, go here.