Sunny Lowe and her coworkers at Arizona Pool and Pond have spent months stalking Angie's Lobster.
Ever since they stumbled on the drive-thru lobster restaurant in Phoenix, they've been a little obsessed.
When she heard a year ago that it was coming to Tucson, Lowe started watching the restaurant's website for news of its opening at 110 S. Wilmot Road.
"We have been stalking them online waiting for the new spot to open," she said on Tuesday, hours after the restaurant finally opened.
Lowe, who was among about two dozen people in line just after noon Tuesday, ordered lunch for her office including the signature $9.99 cold lobster roll and a warm lobster roll for $11.99, along with a fried cod fish sandwich ($4.99 to $8.99).
"It was amazing," she said a couple of hours later as she was penning her online review. "It would have been nice to have pictures to post with my review except we inhaled it."
Sunny Lowe, director of operations at Arizona Pool & Pond Company, places an order for her coworkers Tuesday at Angie's Lobster, 110 S. Wilmot Road. Lowe said she and her coworkers checked the website daily awaiting for the Tucson location to open.
Angie's Lobster was the second of Tony and Roushan Christofellis' drive-thru concepts to open in Tucson in a matter of days.
The couple last Friday opened Angie's Prime Grill with a menu of grilled steak, chicken and shrimp served as a wrap, salad or rice bowl, at 2574 N. Campbell Ave.
Both restaurants only offer drive-thru, following the Christofellis' template for their maiden restaurant venture Salad and Go.
The salad and wraps restaurant, which the couple launched in 2013 and sold in 2020, kept prices at around $6 by taking ownership of several aspects of the business, from single-sourcing, processing and distributing its ingredients to limiting retail footprints. The restaurants have no dining rooms or public space; customers order at automated kiosks or online and every transaction is cashless.
The restaurants also have no marketing budget including branded packaging, all of which saves on operating costs and allows the company to keep down consumer costs while raising employee wages, Tony Christofellis said.
The idea, Christofellis has said, is to make "luxury" foods like steak and lobster accessible to consumers who find it difficult to afford the rising cost of fast-food.
A crowd of people wait for their orders Tuesday, opening day at Angie's Lobster, 110 S. Wilmot Road.
Christofellis said he plans to open two more Angie's Grill locations and another Angie's Lobster in Tucson in 2025, as well as an outpost of the couple's year-old steakhouse burger concept Angie's Burgers.
Late next year or in early 2026, Tucson also might get an Angie's Chicken drive-thru. The Christofellises are currently road-testing the fried chicken sandwich and chicken fingers concept as a food truck set up behind the Angie's Lobster/Angie's Burger in northwest Phoenix, not far from State Farm Stadium.
The concept takes aim at two popular fast-food chicken operations that Christofellis said have raised their prices in the past couple of years to the point that many people can no longer afford it.
Angie's Chicken offers a chicken breast sandwich meal for $5.99 and a chicken tenders meal for $5.49; both come with fries and a drink.
Christofelli said he sources chicken from a producer who raises chickens free-range with no chemicals.
