Not many restaurants can say they have been on board Air Force One. AQ Chicken House can.
With a rich history and deep local roots, AQ Chicken represents a special kind of establishment that once gone is bound to return. From hosting Bill Clinton’s birthday party to hosting countless locals and their families for generations, AQ Chicken has a place in our hearts.
AQ Chicken first opened on July 20, 1947. Roy Ritter founded the restaurant on his chicken farm, where the chicken went straight from the farm to the kitchen to the table. In the decades that followed, the beloved restaurant changed hands, but it always kept locals with fried chicken at their fingertips. AQ Chicken became a major regional destination almost immediately, and within a single generation, it became world famous.
By the late 1960s and early 1970s, the children of the original 1947 patrons were eating the same fried chicken but alongside international tourists, Hollywood celebrities, and U.S. presidents. Multiple locations eventually opened up across the state.
In 2023, AQ Chicken House closed; in July of this year, however, it reopened. But one could make the case that AQ Chicken never really left: it is the spirit of a community that keeps a place alive, something that silently persists in memory of what was.
Over nearly eight decades of serving Northwest Arkansas, just five families have served as owners of the AQ Chicken House brand. It started with Roy Ritter in the 1940s before passing on to Frank Hickingbotham and Ron Palmer in the 1980s. Dick Bradley took over in the 1990s, and he owned it until the closing in 2023. Now, the Lundstrum and Lively families have led the reopening.
The return of AQ Chicken House began, fittingly enough, over a meal at AQ. While Tom and Robin Lundstrum, their daughter Gracie and her husband Jacob Lively, and the rest of their family were eating together, Tom mentioned that he had always wanted to own the iconic restaurant. Jacob took the comment as a challenge. Before leaving, he gave his contact information to someone at the restaurant and asked that the owner give him a call.
That conversation led the Lundstrum and Lively families, through Catalyst Capital, to acquire the AQ Chicken House brand, intellectual property, and secret recipes from Dick Bradley. From there, bringing AQ back became a true family effort, with the four owners each playing important roles in restoring the brand and preparing it for its next chapter.
On Saturday, July 4, 2026, AQ Chicken House was brought back with a highly anticipated new location on West Emma Avenue in Downtown Springdale. The community’s collaboration on this project is impossible to overstate.
The effort involved an eighteen-month process of recovering the secret recipes. Former cooks and general managers Larry Mounce and Mark Henry as well as former owner Ron Palmer made hands-on adjustments, ensuring that everything tasted the same as it always had. The Lundstrum and Lively families were not interested in simply rebranding AQ Chicken; they intended to carry on the tradition.
Everything on the interior was put together with the same level of intentionality. At AQ Chicken, generations of people were greeted with the same “Hi, Hon!” by longtime hostess Miss Jeri. Today, those words are engraved on the host stand right when you walk in. Detours into the gift shop revealed toddlers rummaging through a treasure chest full of toys in search of new finds. Nearby, an oversized ledger awaited new guests to mark their arrival, a historical record of sorts for all those who visited over the years. These, too, can be found at the new location.
To make it even more special, every part of the revival—from the ledger to the wallpaper to the woodwork—was made by local artisans. The ledger was put together by Ross Egaer at Arcom Plus and Seth Tomboli at Tomboli Leather Works. The wallpaper was designed across town at Painted Paper. The tables, chairs, podiums, and booths—“just about everything made of wood”—were crafted by Jared Breedlove at Beloved Furniture. As a local destination, AQ Chicken made a point to put the spotlight on local craftsmanship.
“You walk in and you’re supposed to feel like it’s grandma’s house,” Gracie said. “That’s what we wanted for the design, the furniture, even the smell.”
This makes AQ Chicken feel almost like a secret that’s too personal to tell. And yet, this is precisely its charm: we can’t resist it because we all want to go back to grandma’s. Consequently, the secret becomes ours to share.
In any case, food and place are closely tied to our sense of home. By creating a sense of home in the restaurant, the Lundstrum and Lively families have created a unique dining experience that carries on the AQ tradition.
“Every artifact, from the host stand to the old ledger, was placed to make longtime customers feel at home again,” Gracie said. “Being a home has made it worth the drive since 1947.”
Since the year it first opened, AQ Chicken House has been a central part of our community, and perhaps it always will. Through all the years, all the stories, and all the people, this wasn’t really a revival after all. It was simply a return to something that had never gone away, for some places can never truly be forgotten.
The Lundstrum and Lively families were not interested in simply rebranding AQ Chicken; they intended to carry on the tradition.
Fun Fact
During a 2000 campaign stop at Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport, George W. Bush requested AQ Chicken for his flight. The Secret Service picked up the order, and Bush ate his AQ Chicken aboard Air Force One. Laura Bush reportedly went with the catfish.