Family-Friendly Restaurant has been Owner’s Longtime Favorite
- Wingers Alehouse has been a go-to destination for Juanita Gaeta’s family, and she jumped at the chance to invest in one of the family-friendly restaurants when it became available.
- The fan-turned-franchisee has seen sales double since she and business partner-husband Dusty Shipp purchased the Winnemucca, Nev., Wingers two years ago.
- Their investment in restaurant upgrades, focus on customer service and food quality, and attention to hiring and training has contributed to success, she says.
- Gaeta and Shipp are opening a new Wingers Alehouse in June in Fernley, Nev., and they hope to open a third restaurant in the future.
Juanita Gaeta remembers how the Wingers Alehouse in her hometown of Elko, Nev., was always a favorite destination for her family’s get-togethers and celebrations. “For as long as I can remember, Wingers has been the place where everybody wanted to go. There’s a little bit of everything. They have beer. They have kids’ menus. The food’s great. It just has the perfect atmosphere for a family-friendly restaurant,” she says.
Today, Gaeta is a fan-turned-franchisee who is planning to open her second Wingers Alehouse location with business partner-husband Dusty Shipp (pictured together above). The couple purchased an existing Wingers Alehouse two years ago in Winnemucca, Nev., in the northwestern part of the state, and they plan to open a new restaurant in June in Fernley, Nev., in the Reno-Tahoe-Sparks metropolitan area. Gaeta is already looking ahead: “We hope to acquire a third one!”
Family-Friendly Restaurants
Gaeta and her family have a history in hospitality. When she was 19, she helped her brother launch and run a Mexican restaurant in Elko. Later, she and her father bought a little bar, which they ran for about six years.
The family had been out of the restaurant business for years when Gaeta, by then a successful real estate broker and investor, learned that the Wingers Alehouse in Winnemucca was available. She didn’t have to think twice about investing in the family-friendly restaurant franchise.
“I love restaurants. But once we were no longer part of that world, it felt like something was missing,” she says. “My mom really loved Wingers wings — it was the one thing she said she craved. When the Wingers opportunity came up and I told my mom, she was like, ‘What? Really? We’re going to have our own?’”
America’s Small-Town Alehouse
Winnemucca, Fernley and Elko are typical locations for Wingers, which dubs itself as America’s Small-Town Alehouse. Central to the Wingers Alehouse model is its focus on franchise locations in small to mid-sized markets where restaurants can succeed with smaller footprints and staff sizes – without competition from big restaurant chains that require larger markets to be profitable.
“We are in metropolitan markets, but the bread and butter for Wingers Alehouse has always been small-town America,” says CEO Eric Slaymaker, co-founder with brother Scott Slaymaker. “We’ve been extremely successful in smaller communities, either on the outskirts of metropolitan areas or in small rural towns like Vernal, Utah; Nampa, Idaho; Ontario, Ore.; and West Jordan, Utah.”
Trending: Comfort, Community, Nostalgia
Since the first Wingers American Diner opened in 1993 in Bountiful, Utah, the franchise has expanded well beyond its Salt Lake City base, with 24 locations open by the end of this summer primarily across the Mountain West and Midwest. Wingers’ successful alehouse concept features up to 101 varieties of beer (aka “Alehouse 101”) including regional craft brews, as well as a new elevated yet comfortable interior and architectural design prototype.
Comfort, community and nostalgia are key words used by chefs and restaurateurs, including those interviewed for a Forbes article, to describe 2026 dining trends. But Wingers Alehouse focused on these elements long before they were trending. The brand’s mission, in fact, is to “create amazing experiences.” All the family-friendly restaurants have décor that evokes nostalgia and celebrates their communities, including artwork created locally with craft beer labels. Seating is designed for stay-a-while comfort. Wingers chicken wings, Sticky [chicken] Fingers and Wingers’ Original Amazing Sauce remain the stars of a diverse, chef-inspired menu that also includes salads, burgers, and Southwestern and Asian-influenced dishes.
A Winnemucca Welcome
Since buying their first Wingers Alehouse, which had been open since 2012, Gaeta and Shipp have seen sales double as a result of their investment in restaurant upgrades and maintenance, focus on customer service and food quality, and keen attention to hiring and developing a team of positive, can-do staff members.
“Everybody’s been very welcoming in Winnemucca over the last two years, and we have friends there now!” Gaeta says. “Because we spend quite a bit of time in the restaurant, people greet us by our first names, and we get to know their kids. We bring our 5-year-old, Aly, to the restaurant, and she puts on an apron, pretends to be taking orders and helps wipe tables. We attend events, and we’re part of the chamber of commerce. We really try to get involved in the community. And that’s our goal for Fernley, as well.”
Initially, the couple made the 1.5-hour drive from Elko to Winnemucca six out of seven days a week. Shipp, who owns a construction company, typically dropped Gaeta at the restaurant then headed to a nearby subdivision where he has been building homes. The couple has been able to reduce their restaurant visits to about two times a week “and we’re comfortable with that,” she says, giving credit to their general manager, Julian Carvajal, and his father, Eddie Carvajal, their kitchen lead who previously worked at Gaeta’s brother’s restaurant.
Servant Leadership
Personal and professional development is important to Gaeta and Shipp, who have their own leadership and mindset coaches to help them achieve their goals. They seek like-minded employees. “Over time, we’ve been able to really figure out what we want in the people who are going to work with us: staff members who want to be there, who appreciate it, who want growth and can do it all with a positive attitude,” Gaeta says. “Now when we’re doing our hiring, we know either they fit our culture or they don’t.”
She says showing appreciation for these team members is important, not only through parties for them and their families, gifts, awards and a recent surprise trip to Starbucks, but also in providing the tools, equipment, support and a sense of stability they need to do their best.
The Wingers fan-turned-franchisee says the Slaymakers exemplify these leadership qualities. “I was such a fan that when I met the founders, they were like celebrities to me. The fact that they have visited the store several times and they’ve been interested in the changes we’ve made says a lot. Their reps are here all the time for quality assurance checks. They have an open-door policy if we have ideas, questions, complaints,” Gaeta says. “Leadership comes from the top, and the longer I’m in business, the more I understand that.”
Visit the Wingers Alehouse website to learn more about franchising opportunities.
