In the summer of 2015, food-truck-turned-restaurant
Ms. Cheezious announced it had set its cheesy sights on opening an additional permanent location.
Finally, that talk has become reality. Ms. Cheezious will open a second brick-and-mortar location, this one in Coral Gables.
The restaurant will be located at 1915 Ponce de Leon Blvd., the former Route 9 space. Plans are to open as early as April. Ms. Cheezious owners Brian and Fatima Mullins had been looking at several locations in Miami when they noticed the Route 9 space was still vacant. Brian Mullins says they knew right away it was perfect. "We just signed a lease."
The restaurant, he says, is turnkey, with most permits in place. "We just have to make it a Ms. Cheezious." Work has already begun, and Mullins was painting all weekend.
The grilled-cheese maven says the next logical step was to open a location in the Coral Gables area. "We have a lot of people in the Pinecrest/Coral Cables/Coconut Grove area who love our sandwiches, but the drive to where we are now [on the Upper Eastside] is just too long. Now we'll have a restaurant farther south."
Mullins also hopes to tap into the local Coral Gables businesses for a robust lunch service. "We're not directly on [Miracle] Mile, so there's parking here. It's easy to grab lunch."
The restaurant will be open for lunch and dinner and will serve all of Ms. Cheezious' classic sandwiches, including the grilled blue and bacon, the crabby cheese, and the croqueta monsieur.
As for future plans, Mullins says right now the focus is on opening the Coral Gables location and then maybe another grilled-cheese shop. As for possibly franchising the name and taking their sexy pin-up mascot national, Mullins says that his team enjoys maintaining ownership of Ms. Cheezious and that there are no foreseeable plans for that kind of expansion. "We want to keep her in the family."