Sonic Breaks Ground in Manchester

Sonic is coming Manchester, really.

After rumors began swirling around more than a year ago that the popular drive-in restaurant chain could soon be coming to town, the opening of the Manchester location moved that much closer to reality Friday when the owners of the Connecticut Sonic franchise license and town officials held a ground breaking ceremony at the restaurant’s future Buckland Street location.

“Our over 29,000 Facebook fans have been letting us know for a while now that Manchester is where they wanted us to come,” said Gina Mesite Mueller, a member of the family that owns the Sonic of Connecticut franchise. “They have been patiently waiting and asking ‘are you going to come and put one in Manchester? When? How long? Please!’  The support we have been getting from everyone is tremendous.”

The Mesite family, longtime restaurateurs in the state, opened the first Connecticut location last July in their hometown of Wallingford, and plans have been underway to open the Manchester location at the site of the former 99 Restaurant at 90 Buckland St. since. But a deed restriction belonging to a neighboring property owner, the ExxonMobil at 112 Buckland St., stalled things, although those issues have now been resolved and the Mesites say they hope to have the new Sonic location open by late May or early June.

“Coming here was an honest pleasure,” said Robert Mesite, who runs the business operations for the Mesite family. “Everybody from the town planner, Mark Pellegrini, to everybody else working, was great. You can understand why if you look around Manchester how well developed it is and how well it’s run. And I said to my family, ‘you know, we’ve really got to get into this city.” 

State Sen. Steve Cassano, D-Manchester, who attended Friday morning’s ceremony said he had not seen as much anticipation for a business opening in town since the Shoppes at the Buckland Hills Mall opened in the early 1990s.

“I’ve been doing openings since 1977 and the most anticipated was the Buckland Hills,” Cassano said. “I’ve got to tell you that this opening is the same amount of anticipation from not only the community but the region itself. Everybody knows it’s coming, everybody wants to know when it’s going to open. It’s just a wonderful opportunity.”

Mayor Louis Spadaccini, who also attended Friday’s ceremony, said he was looking forward to Sonic coming to town not just because he wanted to taste the restaurant’s delicious food and copious beverage options, but also so that people would finally stop asking him when Sonic was going to open in Manchester.

“Everywhere I go someone stops me and says ‘when is the Sonic coming?’” Spadaccini said. “It’s unbelievable how many times I get asked that question, and I can’t tell you what a relief it was to see the buildings come down and the construction begin, because when I tell them it’s coming soon they almost didn’t believe me. Now I can point to it and say ‘it’s actually coming.’”