Zeeno finds community in Slippery Rock
Before Zeeno’s Firehouse BBQ and Grill set up shop in Slippery Rock with the owner’s signature chicken-on-a-stick, the Syrian immigrant had served the University of Pittsburgh.
Zeeno Khalil already had success in Pittsburgh. He’d worked in the food industry for his parents since 1978, owned his own Mediterranean restaurant since 2000 and helped his cousin open a pizza shop in Oakland in 2006.
Then, in 2017 when he wanted a business a little more mobile, he found the untapped late-night market of Slippery Rock.
“After the first two years, I started to recognize what it was that we were doing,” Khalil said, reminiscing on the thousands of students and alumni he’s met. “It wasn’t just about food. It was about providing a service, being friendly and making people feel at home and at ease.”
Khalil didn’t invent the chicken-on-a-stick, but he did perfect it when he saw a void in the market.
Shortly after Khalil and his cousin opened their Oakland-based pizza shop, a Vietnamese lunch place opened nearby. The two businesses were after different markets until the owner of the Vietnamese restaurant broke into the late-night market with chicken-on-a-stick.
“It got to a point where he made so much money that he opened up a full-scale restaurant and closed the late-night spot,” Khalil said.
He said when the Vietnamese restaurant closed, they saw a lot of students in that market late at night looking for chicken-on-a-stick.
“That continued for a good few weeks, then one day, my cousin looked at me and said, ‘you know, we should do chicken-on-a-stick,’” Khalil said.
About four years later, with a 10-ounce grill on Semple Street, Zeeno’s restaurant became the new “Pitt“ stop for college students wanting to visit their friends and party.
“They would say to us, ‘we would die to have something like this on our campus,’” Khalil said. “And that’s kind of what jump-started me doing a food truck. It all started with chicken-on-a-stick.”
Khalil said he explored multiple locations and campuses before deciding on Slippery Rock for its proximity to Pittsburgh. Slippery Rock Township set him up with a plot of land by Pine Glenn Apartments.
“Unbeknownst to me, where we’re at now is a key spot. It’s central to all the housing, you have to walk or drive by, and I’m directly across from the school,” he said. “It turned out to be an amazing spot.”
Despite an “amazing spot,” business wasn’t immediate.
“I was really concerned the first semester, because word wasn’t getting out,” Khalil said. “It took a while, but each semester from that point, it kept getting stronger and stronger and stronger.”
Khalil started opening his food truck every Friday and Saturday from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m. on Friday, Aug. 21. He’s become so ingrained in the community that he’s considered an honorary brother of the Theta Xi fraternity.
“Now, the customer base is just amazing,” he said.
