There are plenty of places to grab a bite to eat on Loudon Road over by the mall – as long as you like national chains like Applebee’s, the Ninety Nine, Taco Bell, Dairy Queen, Chipotle and others. There’s nothing wrong with any of those places, but you’ve tried them all before – many times, most likely.
By the end of this month (with any luck), there will be a new option to choose from, and it has New Hampshire roots: Wrap City Sandwich Company.
As its name implies, Wrap City does a lot of wraps and sandwiches. They’re also fairly well-known for their homemade potato chips. There are currently locations in Londonderry, Tilton, Epping and Amherst, and franchisee Mark Kondry, who owns the Tilton and Epping stores, hopes to have his Concord location open by April 29, though he said there were still a few key components that needed to be in place first. “It might be a little tough” to meet the April 29 date, he said.
Kondry has a background in running restaurants. The Hooksett resident used to own a couple Sal’s Pizza locations, and was actually not working at the time the Wrap City opportunity came up. A couple of Kondry’s friends started the business, with the first location in Londonderry. Kondry went by to check the place out one day to see how everything was going, and he was impressed.
“I said, this is a pretty cool concept,” he said. “I thought it was just a little bit easier concept” than that of a pizza place.
With a restaurant like Wrap City, it’s all about the prep work, Kondry said. While the menu is huge for a sandwich shop – there are 21 different wraps to choose from, 18 sandwich options, nine salads, eight flatbreads and those signature homemade chips – the concept is simple because many of the menu items feature the same ingredients with slight variations.
“The main ingredients are chicken, bacon, turkey is a big one,” Kondry said. “The ingredients are pretty much all there – we pretty much do chicken every day.”
The key is putting in the work early in the day.
“We do a lot of prep in the morning, and then after that, just follow the sandwich instructions and throw it together.”
It’s a nice philosophy when you think about it. You cut up a bunch of veggies and meats in the morning, then just wrap those contents in whatever type of wrap the customers wants throughout the day.
That said, everything is made to order, Kondry said. A sandwich can take up to 10 minutes to make sometimes, and with the lunchtime rush, it’s always a good idea to call ahead and place your order first. You’ll probably want to do that anyway, what with the huge menu that would probably take you 10 minutes just to read everything that’s on it.
We don’t have enough space in this paper to list all of the items, but for starters, wraps include names like Bobby V’s (warm turkey, bacon, lettuce, tomato, Hellmann’s mayonnaise and American cheese on a toasted white wrap), Paris Shroom (Balsamic marinated portobello mushroom, baby spinach, crumbled bleu cheese and tomato on a toasted wheat wrap) and San Antonio (Tex-Mex-style spicy chicken, sour cream, salsa, cheddar cheese, lettuce and tomato on a toasted tomato basil wrap).
For sandwiches, you can get things like Kingston Bay (roast beef, thousand island dressing, crispy onions, pepper jack cheese and lettuce on grilled sourdough), Si Racha (breaded chicken cutlet, Sriracha sauce, cheddar, crispy onions, tomato and carrot sticks on grilled sourdough) and Miamiwich (roasted pulled pork, pepper jack cheese, avocado, crisp lettuce and chipotle sauce on a toasted bulky roll).
As you can see, the options are a little different from what you’d find at a Subway or D’Angelo. The brain trust behind Wrap City has found a way to use simple ingredients to create a diverse menu, with lots of healthy options.
The restaurant, which will have tables and seating for about 30, will be in the same mini plaza as Aspen Dental and Mattress Firm, in the same parking lot as Chipotle. Kondry said he’s been into that Chipotle a few times and that it was always packed. The hope is that at least some of those customers would be interested in giving Wrap City a try, and there’s good reason to hope for that.
“A lot of people are excited about that Concord location,” Kondry said. “A lot of people live up here (in Tilton) and work in Concord, so we can get them both ways. The DMV is real excited – gosh!”
Assuming the Concord location becomes successful, Kondry said he’s looking into opening another one in Plymouth, and that he would likely be done acquiring Wrap City locations after that. He likes that with Wrap City, he doesn’t have to be making the food for 12 hours a day like he did at Sal’s, and the Concord location will be run Martha Edgar, freeing up Kondry to bounce around a bit.
For more information about Wrap City, go to wrapcitysandwiches.com. (And even though the place isn’t open yet, if you’re dying to have a look at the location, put 273 Loudon Road into your GPS — that’s the address for Aspen Dental, right next door.)
