Full Moon Bar-B-Que to locate into Wood Square Shopping Center

TUSCALOOSA | There’s a full moon on the rise, and it’s over McFarland Boulevard.

Birmingham-based Full Moon Bar-B-Que is taking over the former Papa’s College Custard at 1383 McFarland Blvd. in the Wood Square shopping center.

Brian Ahmed, franchisee and president of the Tuscaloosa restaurant, said crews will begin renovating the 4,200-square-foot building within the next few weeks for a late-August opening.

The restaurant specializes in barbecue ribs and sandwiches, chicken and smoked turkey and offers Buffalo wings, side dishes and homemade desserts.

Ahmed said the Tuscaloosa restaurant will serve beer and feature 25 television screens, most of them tuned to sports. It will be open seven days a week, with extended hours for University of Alabama home football games, he said.
This will be Full Moon’s sixth restaurant in Alabama and its first in the state outside the Birmingham market. “We have a lot of friends in Tuscaloosa who have been trying to get us to come down there for four or five years," Ahmed said.

The first Full Moon opened in Birmingham’s Southside in 1980. The restaurant’s founder, the late Pat James, played football under Coach Paul “Bear" Bryant at the University of Kentucky and coached for Bryant at UA from 1958-1964.

Brothers David and Joe Maluff purchased the Southside restaurant from James 12 years ago and have since added four locations in the Birmingham area, including a restaurant in Alabaster that opens this month.

David Morrow, president of Morrow Realty Co., which manages Wood Square shopping center, said the building’s location on McFarland Boulevard and its proximity to construction of two new condominium complexes makes it ideal for a restaurant.

“With [Ahmed’s] experience in management and with their reputation, I think it’s going to go over well with the business and student lunch crowd," Morrow said.

Menu prices range from $3 for sandwiches to $7 for most entrees. Takeout and catering also are available.

Toby Wilson, president of the Tuscaloosa Area Hospitality Association, related the spurt to UA’s plan to increase enrollment to 28,000 students by 2013. “Everything is so robust in Tuscaloosa that people are wanting to make a buck off the economy," he said. “People need more places to sleep and more places to eat, and it all goes back to that growth."