John Stage winces at the phrase “restaurant chain.” To the co-founder and CEO of Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, it has connotations of cookie-cutter building designs and identical menus.
Instead, Stage prefers to say that Dinosaur is building “ a collective.”
Dinosaur, which started in Syracuse in 1988 and has been a downtown Rochester institution since its opening in 1998, is expanding its presence in the greater New York City metropolitan market. And it has eyes on Buffalo.
“The growth we’re doing is not crazy growth,” Stage said. “We can do this.”