New restaurant in the works for James Street South
Andrea Macko, Staff Reporter Diners in St. Marys with a taste for southern barbecue food may soon be satiated.
John Carruthers, owner of the Subway restaurant on James Street South, is looking to build a Red Rooster’s Canadian BBQ and Taps immediately north of Subway. There will be a public hearing at the town’s next Committee of
Adjustment meeting next Wednesday, May 21 at 8 p.m. to see if the lot housing Subway can be severed in order to build.
Carruthers, who also owns a Subway franchise in Grand Bend, notes that sales at his St. Marys location “are up significantly” since the opening of the Pyramid Centre, and that a new restaurant has the potential to be equally busy.
“The Pyramid Recreation Centre was the extra business generator needed to bring (Red Rooster’s) here,” he notes, thanks to traffic from tournaments and other events held at the recently expanded facility. “It’s a busy and exciting time in St. Marys,” he says.
The proposed restaurant, which Carruthers says is still in the design phase,
would be roughly 4,500 sq.-ft., larger than the Subway, with seating
capacity for approximately 100 people.
He calls the menu “typical barbecue comfort food,” with ribs, wings, pizzas
and other entrees.
Carruthers says that the interior design of the restaurant will incorporate
one of the lot’s historic residents, the St. Marys Wood Specialty Company,
which manufactured baseball bats and hockey sticks for a number of years.
There will also be lots of televisions, he adds, for sports fans to keep up
with games while enjoying a meal.
In the proposed design, much of the parking for both restaurants will be
moved to the rear of the buildings, with a bank of angled parking on the
south side of each building.
People with concerns over the severance issue only can attend the public
meeting on May 21 at 8 p.m. at the Municipal Operations Centre.
Assuming the build goes as planned, the restaurant could be open within a
year or so.  
There is one other Red Rooster’s location, in Forest. It has been open for
four years. The franchise is the brainchild of  Reginald Rooster, a Lambton
County native who played college baseball in the Southern United States.
“Red Rooster,” as was his nickname, played with a number of Triple A teams
until a knee injury ended his career. He retired, moving back to Ontario,
and  turned his newfound affection for smoked barbecue  food into a
restaurant opportunity.
Upgrades at Subway
Carruthers also says that the Subway will undergo a remodelling in June,
with new cooking equipment and decor. He says that the restaurant will
likely be closed for a few days due to the upgrades.