Valerie Babb, President of StarrChex, the franchisee of Checkers Statesboro, along with members of her management team have broken ground on what will be the return of Checkers in Statesboro. Joining Valerie at the groundbreaking were Danny Linderman, StarrChex, Operating Partner and his wife Sherry, Stan Babb, Valarie’s husband, Dija Wardlaw, Manager of Statesboro Checkers, Chad Averitt, Synovus and Jeremy Hard, EMC Engineering.
This marks one of the most anticipated restaurant returns in Statesboro. The new, state of the art Checkers will be located at 75 Northside Drive East between the former Payless Shoes and KFC. The property is being developed to include a retail store along with Checkers. They are building to suit a tenant, which they will announce soon.
Site preparations have begun and they plan to bring in the modular building to the site in a couple of weeks with a goal of being open by the end of this year. The brand new checkers will be almost double the size of our original one. It will include a dual lane drive thru which will merge into a single window unlike the dual window configuration of the old restaurant.
“Statesboro loves Checkers and we are so excited to finally break ground on the new Checker’s, said Valerie Babb, President of StarrChex. “We want to thank Synovus for working with us on this project and EMC Engineering for their help with the site preparation. It has taken us much longer than we had hoped to return, but are thrilled to be coming back and look forward to serving this community again.”
They closed the original location of Checkers, at 418 Northside Drive East, in May of 2017 after operating 22 years at that location. Hull Property Group, who Checkers leased the land from “non-renewed” their lease. Shortly after they vacated the property, Hull built, a strip center that now includes AT&T and Aspen Dental.
Dija Wardlaw has been working in the Savannah locations, also owned by StarrChex, awaiting the reopening of Statesboro. She will return as the manager of the new Statesboro Checkers.
Dija started working in the store when she was 16 and still in high school. She worked in the store nearly 20 years. Ten of those years, she has served as the manager.
“Dija’s story is a great example of the quality of employees we have in Statesboro. She is a big reason why we did not want to leave the market. Operationally, the Statesboro restaurant continued to excel and exceed our expectations,” said Danny Linderman, Operating Partner for StarrChex. “We know you are going to love the new Checkers.”
Linderman said they would be hiring 60 new positions for the Statesboro store. We will share more on how to explore job opportunities with Checkers as soon as they announce the opportunities available.
