If you have been waiting and waiting and waiting some more for the Rt. 72 location of Chick-fil-A to open, you may have decided at some point that the popular chain was never really going to open its Stafford Township store.

Not so. Construction is wrapping up, the store is being organized and an actual opening date has been set. Thursday, March 17, the new Manahawkin Chick-fil-A will officially open, according to a Facebook post.

We can understand how you could have run out of patience waiting for the store to open, though.

The Stafford Township Planning Board first considered plans to open the franchise on the westbound side of Rt. 72 in October of 2017.

That's over four years ago.

In 2019, the Asbury Park Press wrote that Parsi Inventments, Inc. had submitted applications to build a Chick-fil-A restaurant and a Panera Bread restaurant on a 5-acre parcel of land on an Rt. 72 site which was once been home to a bank and an office complex but has now been sitting empty for several years.

The proposal called for the construction of a 5,262-square-foot Chick-fil-A restaurant with 114 seats and a 4,833-square-foot Panera Bread restaurant — both with drive-thrus.

If you have been waiting not-so-patiently for a delicious Chick-fil-A chicken sandwich option right in your lower Ocean County neighborhood,  your wait is almost over.

Now, when the heck is that Manahawkin Panara Bread going to open?

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