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Slim Chickens, a quick-service restaurant, opened Monday morning in Parker, off South Parker Road and Pine Lane — just south of E-470.

It’s the fourth Colorado location for the Fayetteville, Arkansas-based franchisor, with the other three in Aurora, Centennial and Colorado Springs. There are more than 170 Slim Chickens nationwide.

“We’ve got just a fanatical focus on the customer experience, delivering Southern hospitality, and the food quality is just phenomenal,” said Will Smith, president and CEO of the L.O.V.E. Restaurant Group — which has the exclusive franchise rights for Colorado and Utah locations.

Smith said he’s confident the location at 9566 Twenty Mile Road will be successful once customers taste the fresh chicken tenders, marinated in buttermilk and lightly battered. There’s a Chick-fil-A and a Raising Caine’s within a half mile of the new location.

“I’ll put ours up against any of those in a blind-folded, side-by-side taste test any day of the week,” he said. “We’re better quality and better tasting.”

The new restaurant has high visibility right off Parker Road, where traffic counts show more than 65,000 motorists a day pass.

“I’m really excited to get the commuters heading home — ‘swing and bring’ will be easy for them,” Smith said of the restaurant’s close proximity to the E-470 off-ramp on southbound Parker Road.

Officials hired more than 80 workers to staff the new restaurant. He praised the quality of local workers.

“These hourly workers are as smart and as hardworking as many CEOs I’ve seen,” he said.

The company offers competitive wages and benefits, including a mandatory two-week vacation “in addition to your regular time off.”

“We’ve seen the burnout in the restaurant industry, so you have to go away for two weeks minimum,” Smith said. “It’s going to affect our profitability, but I don’t care. It’s important to me those benefits meet our values.”

Those values include respect, from managers to employees, from employees to customers.

“When you come into a place like that to eat, you can just feel the energy,” Smith said.

The menu includes grilled chicken options, salads, chicken and waffles, a wide variety of dipping sauces and Southern-style staples like fried okra and fried pickles.

Plans call for two additional restaurants in Colorado Springs, three in the Denver area and one in Longmont.