Lake Ronkonkoma Chick-fil-A to open Thursday

Chick-fil-A has announced an opening date for its newest Long Island restaurant, as locations continue to hatch across the region.

The restaurant will open its doors in Lake Ronkonkoma on Thursday at 6:30 a.m., the company said in a statement posted on its website.

There will be some inaugural freebies: Customers who show up to the new location on opening day wearing cow print (a nod to the company’s mascot) can redeem a free entree or kids meal, Chick-fil-A said in the release.

With the newest addition to the franchise, there will be 14 Chick-fil-As on Long Island, according to its online store locator. The chicken-focused chain opened a Bohemia storefront in March. Recently, the Town of Islip moved forward with a plan to open one at the South Shore Mall in Bay Shore.

Plans for an opening in West Babylon, in place of a former Payless shoe store, were recently halted, Newsday reported. The plan had first been approved in 2022.

The Lake Ronkonkoma opening will create 100 jobs, the statement said.

Chick-fil-A did not immediately respond to questions about the chain’s expansion in the region.

Sam Nesbitt is the owner and operator of the new Lake Ronkonkoma location. He and Chick-fil-A Inc. will donate $25,000 to be shared between Island Harvest and Long Island Cares Inc. in honor of their opening day, according to the release.

The first Chick-fil-A opened in Atlanta in 1967. Its first on Long Island was in Port Jefferson Station, which opened in 2015 and still operates today.

By Rachel Weiss

rachel.weiss@newsday.com@RachMWeiss

Rachel Weiss joined Newsday in 2016. As a real estate/living multimedia reporter, Rachel writes feature stories and contributes to and appears in on-camera video packages. She was the lead reporter on Newsday’s LI Acts of Kindness series.