A lot about AQ Chicken House has changed since Arkansas Business last wrote extensively about the planned revival of the legendary Springdale restaurant, but one goal remains the same: serving the best bone-in fried chicken.
And though high construction costs altered plans for new construction, that situation hasn’t been the biggest challenge, said Tom Lundstrum, a partner in the venture. “To me the biggest difficulty is competing with memories. And memories aren’t always accurate, but they’re generally intense.”
“We’re all very well aware of this brand,” he added. “It means a lot to us personally. It means a lot to this area. This brand is 78 years old.”
The AQ brand is actually now closing in on 79 years. The restaurant, at 1207 N. Thompson St., was founded in 1947 and closed March 18, 2023, and the building was demolished. Catalyst Capital, a northwest Arkansas investment company, announced in October 2023 that, after buying the rights to the AQ Chicken House name and recipes, it would reopen the beloved restaurant.
Lundstrum is a partner at Catalyst Capital along with his wife, state Rep. Robin Lundstrum; their daughter, Gracie Lively; and Gracie’s husband, Jacob Lively.
They had originally hoped to open the reborn AQ last year at the Elm Springs Road exit off Interstate 49, on land owned by the family. But high construction costs dashed those plans.
“It was all economics,” Lundstrum said. “The cost of construction in northwest Arkansas, going vertical, is just ridiculous.”
“I had a Johnny Morris dream — Bass Pro Shops [founder] Johnny Morris — to create a regional destination experience, and I had a Tom Lundstrum budget and it just didn’t jibe,” he added.
In October, AQ Chicken House announced that its new restaurant would open instead at 100 W. Emma Ave. in downtown Springdale in spring 2026. A spring opening remains the objective, Lundstrum said earlier this month.
The 30,000-SF building was previously a First Security Bank complex, Lundstrum said. It now houses Cromwell Architects Engineers, the steakhouse Gaskins on Emma and an Onyx Coffee Lab, in addition to the new AQ.
AQ Chicken House will occupy about 5,000 SF and seat 140.
“At the end of the day, I think people are actually happier that we’re in downtown Springdale, on Turnbow Park, on the [Razorback Greenway] trail,” he said.
The restaurant will be operated by Good Gravy Group of Bentonville, a restaurant group whose brands include Tusk & Trotter and Trash Ice Cream. Jacob Lively, who once worked with FoxDen Capital of Little Rock helping in the acquisition of restaurants, said of Good Gravy: “They caught the vision of what we were trying to do with AQ. They’ve been fantastic partners so far.”
Cromwell is the architect for the AQ project. Sargent Contracting of Fayetteville is the contractor.
“The menu is still in flux,” Lundstrom said. “It will very much look like the old AQ menu in that the most popular items will remain. Our primary focus is bone-in fried chicken. And until I get that perfect, I’m not worried about anything else. It will be a smaller menu to start with.”
“We have all the original recipes,” he said. “A really unique benefit to us is that we’ve had so many people reach out to us that used to work for AQ, as recently as a few years ago and as far back as 40 years ago.
“So we have a wealth of expertise available to us to help us get the recipes right, get the taste right, get the presentation right.”
As for the decor, Lundstrom said, “It is definitely AQ, just a much lighter, I think more generationally inviting, environment.”
Catalyst Capital’s investment in the AQ Chicken House project will total about $2 million “by the time we’re in the building,” Lundstrum said.
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