Matthew Hutchison / news@whmi.com

A new Howell chicken restaurant is drawing early attention after starting as a food truck concept and moving into a brick-and-mortar location.

Fowl Language owner Seth Conklin joined WHMI’s Chuck & Madison and the Morning Drive in studio to talk about the restaurant, which is located at 2584 E. Grand River Ave. in Howell, near the Chilson Road intersection.

Conklin said the move into a physical restaurant was always part of the plan.

“When I came up with the food truck idea, my plan was to go brick and mortar, then scale from there,” Conklin said. “I’ll still have a food truck down the road and stuff, but now we don’t need to have as big as one.”

Conklin said his interest in food started when he was young.
“When I was young," he said, "I would watch the Food Channel all the time. I don’t know why, I just always liked it. And then from there I travel a lot and I always look up best chicken sandwich wherever I’m at.”

Conklin said the name Fowl Language came to him after visiting different chicken restaurants during his travels.
“I got the name idea just from going to different ones,” Conklin said. “None of them were ever named it, but that name popped in my head one day.”

The restaurant specializes in chicken sandwiches, wings and sides, with Conklin telling Chuck and Madison that the chicken is fried in 100% beef tallow and that the sauces are homemade.

He said the early response has been strong, even before the restaurant fully rolls out phone orders, online ordering and delivery.

“We haven’t even started phone orders or online orders," he said. "We're doing phone orders later this week, and online and DoorDash start on Monday. Our first week we had just under 300 orders and over 2,100 menu items sold.”

Conklin said the long-term plan is to expand, once the Howell location is running the way he wants it.

“Yeah, that is our plan, definitely to scale,” Conklin said. “I want to go open two more myself within the next couple years, after we get this one 100% dialed and going super smooth.”

Conklin said Fowl Language is also launching Wing Wednesdays, with 90-cent wings every Wednesday.