In addition to serving sandwiches and desserts, Fluff Bakery will add wings to its menu at the start of the summer when it merges with its sister restaurant West Side Wingery.
Fluff, 8 N. Court St., is open until 3 p.m. daily, but the change will allow them to stay open until 11 p.m. Owners Jason and Jessica Kopelwitz made the announcement Monday on signs at Fluff and on social media.
The change in hours and the merge will start during the summer. Jessica said the restaurant will have a more concrete schedule when fall semester starts.
“This summer, we are going to try to be open more on the weekends, and we’ll announce that as soon as we can,” Jessica said. “It may not be every weekend, but it’ll be kind of like pop-ups to try new menu items.”
The couple made the decision to merge the businesses because they wanted to serve dinner at Fluff again and merging made the most sense to them, Jessica said. Previously, Fluff served dinner from fall 2014 to April 2015.
The dinner menu will be focused on many of the same sandwiches that are available at West Side Wingery while adding a few new items, Jessica said.
“We wanted people to be able to have a drink or two and a meal for under 20 bucks, that’s our goal,” Jessica said. “Or if you don’t want to have a drink, you can have a meal for under 10 bucks, a really good meal.”
The location that holds West Side Wingery, 9 N. Shafer St., will be turned into an Italian restaurant.
“We wanted to find someone to take our place,” Jessica said. “The woman who took our place is starting her first business.”
Jessica said she thinks the biggest struggle for Fluff will be letting people know that they will be open for dinner.
Jason and Jessica said they will be coming up with a new marketing strategy after the move takes place. They worked with ImPRessions at Ohio University to get the word out about West Side Wingery when it first opened in January 2015.
“The struggle is getting people to know that (Fluff is) here, so we’ll work on that,” Jessica said.
Blake Lane, an employee at both Fluff and West Side, said going back and forth as an employee gave her the opportunity to meet interesting people.
“(Working at both locations is) very interesting,” Lane said. “The funny thing is, I’ll work up here then go down there and see some of the exact same faces. It is cool, you get to meet a lot of people.”
Amanda Gleason, an OU alumna and manager at Fluff, has worked there for three years and has picked up shifts at West Side Wingery since they opened.
“I think (the move is) going to be good for our team to be all in one place,” Gleason said. “It’s a little bit hard to have two schedules in two different locations. I think it’ll be a lot easier for everyone that’s working.”
