WNBA player Allisha Gray, her brother AJ Gray, and partner Tim Magnum Jr. have embarked on a new venture to open a Wings N Burgers (WNB) Factory in Milledgeville (2485 N. Columbia St.)
From being a state champion in high school to clinching an NCAA basketball title, to 2017 WNBA Rookie of the Year and All-Star, and Olympic Gold medalist in the 2020 Tokyo Games, Gray has left an indelible mark on the world of sports.
Her relationship with Magnum traces back to their days at the University of South Carolina. Following Gray's selection as the fourth overall pick by the Dallas Wings in the 2017 WNBA draft, he joined her in Texas, seizing the opportunity to pursue a master’s degree at Texas State University.
Last year, Gray was traded to the Atlanta Dream, marking a homecoming for the Georgia native who attended Washington County High School in Sandersville.
The decision to venture into the food industry came about unexpectedly when AJ Gray, himself a decorated athlete and former Gatorade Football Player of the Year in Georgia, stumbled upon a WNB Factory in search of food.
Impressed by the fare at WNB Factory, AJ proposed the idea of opening their own franchise to his sister and Tim, igniting the spark for their own WNB Factory endeavor.
“We met with the franchise people and told them the location that we wanted to open up at,' Allisha said. 'Since we’re from Sandersville we wanted to be close to our hometown.'
Magnum said the process took a lot longer than expected.
'From start to finish it took us about a year to open up,' he said. 'We wanted to open up in July, but we couldn’t open until October. We looked at a couple of different locations in Milledgeville, but this spot ended up being the best for us because people could park and come in to sit and eat.”
Amidst the excitement of the grand opening, Magnum acknowledged the stress of managing the operations 'It was a relief because we finally opened, but it was also stressful because we weren’t getting but one delivery truck a week,' he said. 'We were coming into the store every day while running out of stuff, and the line was going out of the door.'
Allisha agreed, and added it was a lot of work “making about 20 trips to the store a day to make sure we had everything.” Still, she also felt “relief” at making it through many “trials and tribulations” to the point they could finally say they were restauranteurs.
AJ said he was happy to just finally be open. However, the three have already had talks about their next venture together.
'I’ll say we’ve had discussions on expanding, but we’re still trying to sort that part out,' Magnum said. 'There will be stuff in the future, but we just don’t know what yet.'
With their combined expertise and passion, the trio appears poised to make a mark on the local culinary scene, blending sportsmanship with entrepreneurship in their endeavors.