Vancouver’s second Chick-fil-A opens Jan. 7 at Vancouver Mall

The wait for Vancouver’s second Chick-fil-A is coming to an end, and if it’s anything like the opening of Vancouver’s first location in 2016, the lines will be long.

The company announced on Facebook that the Vancouver Mall location, 8440 N.E. Vancouver Mall Drive, No. 100, Vancouver, will open Thursday, Jan. 7. The standalone restaurant is in the mall parking lot, west of the C-Tran bus mall. It will be open 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays through Saturdays for drive-thru only service to start. It is not open Sundays for religious purposes, like all Chick-fil-A locations.

Chick-fil-A opened its first restaurant in Clark County at Mill Plain Boulevard and 164th Avenue in September 2016. More than 100 hungry customers set up tents and slept overnight in the parking lot to be some of the first to get chicken sandwiches.

“To ensure the safety of our Guests and Team Members, we will take additional time to review operations, train our new team members, and make sure appropriate precautions are in place before expanding operating hours and expanding service beyond the drive-thru,” Chick-fil-A wrote on Facebook. “Please take advantage of contactless ordering and payment through the Chick-fil-A mobile app.”

Chick-fil-A traditionally offers free meals to the first 100 customers of any new location, but due to the pandemic, the restaurant stopped the practice.

“As we continue to navigate through COVID-19, we have temporarily moved away from hosting our traditional First 100 event at new restaurants,” the company said in July in a statement. “Instead, we are providing free Chick-fil-A meals for a year to 100 people who are making an impact in our local communities.”