Chick-fil-A to open Maple Valley restaurant, create about 100 jobs

A new Chick-fil-A opened in Maple Valley with a promise of about 100 jobs, but the detail workers will want first is pay: a front-of-house supervisor posting tied to the store offered $18.50 to $22 an hour. For cooks, cashiers and shift leaders, that is the difference between a headline hiring push and a paycheck that can actually anchor a schedule.

The restaurant began serving guests on June 4 at 6:30 a.m. at 27264 Maple Valley Black Diamond Rd. SE. It planned to run Monday through Saturday from 6:30 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., which means breakfast, lunch, dinner and late-evening cleanup all have to be covered by the staffing model behind that 100-job figure. Chick-fil-A also told customers to wear cow print on opening day for a free entrée, the kind of promotion that can flood a counter and drive-thru before the first week of routines has even settled.

The store is locally owned and operated by Justin Alley, who was named as the local owner-operator and was born and raised in Enumclaw before working at a Chick-fil-A in Daytona Beach, Florida, and later pursuing ownership. That background matters on the floor. In a chain restaurant, the owner-operator is often the person who sets the tone on training, schedule discipline and whether a rush hour feels organized or chaotic.

The public hiring picture suggests the usual questions still apply. One location page showed no open positions at one point, while a jobs board tied to the restaurant listed five openings, including the front-of-house supervisor role. For Maple Valley, where the city says it needs to plan for 1,570 new jobs and 1,720 additional housing units by 2044, a single restaurant opening fits into a much larger growth story. For workers, though, the question is narrower: whether the promised jobs bring enough hours, enough training and enough stability to make a new opening worth chasing after the ribbon-cutting fades.