The young Honestly Good Chicken Fingers chain is set to expand to other parts of Ontario and potentially the U.S. after opening a new location at Toronto’s Stock Yards Village mall.

The company has signed three additional lease deals and will open new locations in 2027 as it expands beyond the Greater Toronto Area for the first time, said Honestly Good Co-Founder and President Naomi Kempkes in an interview with Connect.

Honestly Good will set up shop in Collingwood, Ont.; Kitchener, Ont.; and the Toronto suburb of Oakville, Ont., giving the chain seven locations since it launched in June 2024 at The Well in downtown Toronto. The company has chosen to go with corporate-owned locations for the foreseeable future, although it is possible that franchise locations will open at some point in the future.

“We have talked about it and we’re open to it, but we just want to make sure that we are executing the current business really well so that we have a solid foundation for when and if we choose to franchise,” said Kempkes.

Thus far, Honestly Good has expanded entirely through the profits of its existing locations. Kempkes and her husband Stephen Czetyrbok, the company’s CEO, launched Honestly Good with cash and have not taken on any debt.

Headquartered in the GTA, Honestly Good is looking to open 15-20 Ontario locations within the next three to five years, said Kempkes. The chain is also looking to move beyond Ontario into other parts of Canada during the same timeframe.

Honestly Good aims to open its first locations outside of Ontario in Calgary and Edmonton and then head over the Rockies into Vancouver, where Kempkes was born and raised.

“Eventually, we would love to go south of the border as well,” said Kempkes.

The southern expansion may come sooner than expected because Honestly Good has been approached about setting up restaurants in two U.S. markets.

The new 35-seat Stock Yards Village eatery will likely serve as a model for each future location’s footprint and layout, said Kempkes. In addition to the Stock Yards Village and The Well locations, Honestly Good has restaurants at Vaughan Mills Shopping Centre in Vaughan Mills, Ont., which opened in March, and CF Sherway Gardens in Toronto’s Etobicoke, area.

Kempkes served as the company’s in-house broker on the first two leases at The Well and CF Sherway Gardens. The restaurant industry veteran obtained her real estate license during the COVID-19 pandemic, but she has since decided to focus on operations, where her heart is.

“You can’t do too many things at once,” she said. “So in order to focus on the business, we have a full team at Urban Reform that takes care of the real estate for us.”

It appears that Honestly Good will keep Urban Reform brokers busy over the next five years.

Pictured: New Honestly Good Chicken Fingers location at Stock Yards Village in Toronto

Photo: Courtesy of Honestly Good Chicken Fingers