Buffalo Wild Wings

The Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant at the Atlantic Terminal mall had been trying for three weeks to address growing crowds of kids coming out for the Tuesday night 50-cent wings special, a top executive said in a telephone interview today.

But a confluence of forces — the restaurant’s location in a major transportation hub, the ability of social networking to rally people, and the interest of a large number of kids wanting to gather on the night before a school holiday — all combined to set the stage for the violence that broke out later that night in nearby Fort Greene, he said.

“It’s sort of a perfect storm, it’s very unfortunate,” said Michael Mehiel, the chief operating officer for Four M Capital LLC, the New York area franchisee for the Buffalo Wild Wings chain.
Last night, Mr. Mehiel sent an e-mail announcing that the Flatbush Avenue restaurant’s Tuesday night Buffalo Wild Wings special will be indefinitely canceled. But in the interview, Mr. Mehiel said the restaurant’s bargain night was “used as a flag.”

Mr. Mehiel said the restaurant, and the Atlantic Terminal mall, had been ramping up its security in the weeks leading up to Tuesday night’s events. Since then, he said, there have been “zero instances of violence in the restaurant.”

However, the crowds continued to grow in the mall. He said the mall increased security, and the restaurant added a fifth guard. On Monday, after they picked up the chatter on social networking sites over the weekend, encouraging Brooklyn’s teenagers to come to Tuesday night’s special, they informed the 88th Precinct, he said.

On Tuesday, the NYPD sent “a large detail to the mall,” he said, but “unfortunately this incident occurred.” Three teenagers were shot in two separate incidents related to groups of roving teens, but none suffered life-threatening injuries. (88th Precinct detectives have asked for witnesses to come forward.)

Mr. Mehiel said there have been no other incident like this in any of the franchise’s other restaurants. But the Atlantic mall restaurant is unusual, he said, in that “it is in an enormous transportation hub. Capt. Anthony Tasso, commanding officer of the 88th Precinct, said Wednesday in an e-mail that, “None of the involved individuals were from Clinton Hill, Fort Greene.”

As for criticism of the restaurant by Council Member Letitia James, he said he is not interested in picking a fight with her.