VANCOUVER, March 4 /CNW/ - A&W Food Services of Canada Inc. is pleased to
announce the opening of a new corporately owned and operated freestanding
restaurant in Ottawa.
    Located at the corner of Merivale and Hunt Club, the new 1,760 square
foot restaurant opened in late December and features approximately 55 seats
and a drive-thru window. Although the company currently owns and operates nine
shopping centre restaurants in the Ottawa area, this is A&W's first
freestanding restaurant to be built in over 35 years in Ottawa.
    Graham Cooke, Vice President of Franchise Development & Facilities, said
that despite severe winter conditions since opening, the restaurant's early
performance has been spectacular. "We are just delighted with sales results in
the first 6 weeks" said Cooke. "So far, sales are much higher than we had
projected and we can hardly wait to see what happens in the spring and
summer". Cooke went on to say that A&W is actively looking for high quality
sites all over the Ottawa region and hopes to begin construction on a second
corporate freestanding restaurant in Ottawa sometime before the end of 2008.
"We are especially pleased with the performance of our new restaurants in
major Ontario markets such as Ottawa, Hamilton, London and Windsor. It is very
gratifying to see how strong the A&W brand is in both large and small
markets". A Grand Opening celebration is scheduled for the new Ottawa
restaurant and will occur within the next few weeks.
    Along with Ottawa, A&W opened 6 other franchised freestanding restaurants
in Ontario in 2007, including locations in Cochrane, Timmins, Tillsonburg,
Tecumseh, Hamilton and a second location in Kitchener. This brings to over 50
the number of A&W freestanding restaurants built in Ontario over the past
6 years. The company looks forward to another year of growth in 2008 and in
February opened an off-highway 401 location in Napanee as part of a
Petro-Canada gas station, convenience store and restaurant complex. Other
locations currently under construction include Leamington, Oshawa and another
off-highway location near Kingston.

    A&W is 100% Canadian-owned and is one of the strongest brand names in the
Canadian foodservice industry, who last year celebrated its 50th Anniversary.
For the past five years, A&W has been recognized as one of Canada's 50 Best
Managed Companies, a national awards program sponsored by Deloitte, CIBC
Commercial Banking, National Post, and Queen's School of Business. Operating
coast-to-coast with over 680 locations, A&W restaurants feature famous
trade-marked menu items such as The Burger Family®, Chubby Chicken® and
A&W Root Beer®.