Restaurant chain grows close to home

BRADENTON — After several years of aggressive national expansion, University Park-based First Watch is opening a location in its home market.

That new location will be in Bradenton, in an outparcel at the front of a Publix-anchored shopping center on the corner of Lockwood Ridge Road and State Road 70. The 3,000-square-foot restaurant is a few miles from the company's home office.

The seventh location for the breakfast-brunch-lunch chain in the Sarasota-Manatee market, the new First Watch will open Monday, Nov. 28, according to a release. It will have about 25 employees.

“We're proud to call this area our home, and we love being just minutes away from some of the country's best beaches and some of the most incredible shops and restaurants who also have a home in Bradenton and Sarasota,” First Watch President Chris Tomasso says in the release. “In the past 30 years, First Watch has grown and evolved quite a bit, and we're grateful for the unwavering support our neighbors and friends have shown during those three decades. We could not be more excited to open another First Watch restaurant in our hometown.”

First Watch has more than 275 restaurants in 26 states, including more than 190 First Watch restaurants, 100 The Egg & I restaurants, one The Good Egg restaurant in Arizona and one Bread & Co. restaurant in Nashville.