Wings, Rings & Things serving up variety at the lake

Published 8:36 am Tuesday, April 12, 2022

When Randy and Suzanne Schilling Brooks first met 26 years ago, both were working at a restaurant, Randy as the manager, and Suzanne as a waitress.

All these years later, the two of are happily married with children.

The latest wrinkle in their love story came when Milledgeville native Suzanne got the idea, partly from her husband, to start her own takeout restaurant. As Randy explained, he was on the road a lot as a semi-truck driver and began noticing that as he passed places to eat, nothing ever excited him.

Once a property became available by the lake area, Suzanne and Randy thought it would be a solid place to open a restaurant to cater to not only the lake traffic, but also to the residents around the lake in the Baldwin County and Putnam County areas.

They opened Wings, Rings & Things, located at 3015 N. Columbia St. in Milledgeville on Jan. 1 of this year.

Suzanne serves as the primary owner and the manager, Cindy McCant runs the day-to-day operations. Suzanne and Randy’s son, Ben, works alongside his mother at the restaurant.

At Wings, Rings & Things, all of the food is fresh and made to order. There are wings and onion rings on the menu as one would expect. However, what customers may not be aware of is how much the restaurant has added to the menu based simply on customer requests and feedback. A few more recent additions that have been made include burgers and the Fisherman’s Snack Pack (which can include anything from chicken or ham and cheese wraps, to biscuits if you’re out during breakfast, and more). There are also hot dogs, chicken tenders/chunks, fresh hand-cut fries, and even some ice cream on the menu for customers looking for a dessert. The menu variety certainly helps make it a unique place to eat.

Suzanne and Randy take pride in the freshness aspect of the menu at Wings, Rings & Things, with Randy remarking that the freshness of their chicken and other items sets the establishment apart.

Randy explained that things were tough on the business at first thanks to COVID and other factors that were hindering their ability to open their takeout restaurant. Thankfully though, the slow start also gave Suzanne and everyone else the chance to sort of work out any kinks that arose before business truly picked up.

The community response, in Randy’s mind, has been great, with Wings, Rings & Things receiving business from all sorts of individuals once things got going.

“The comments we’re getting from folks are very positive,” he remarked.

To go along with that positive feedback, Wings, Rings & Things also recently started a contract with a local private school, and will be providing them lunches one day a week. They are also looking to expand that to other private schools in the area, so that they can provide children with affordable lunches to eat.

What Suzanne enjoys most about running the restaurant would absolutely have to be being able to develop the sauces and products, and then watching customers discuss how good the items are. She finds it to be very rewarding to get any feedback, whether that be in person or online. Her number one goal is for the items that they serve at Wings, Rings & Things to be high quality, things that people will say they’ve gotten their money’s worth for.

The thing that has kept Suzanne and everyone at Wings, Rings & Things going is the fact that they’re aware that the business will continue to grow as time goes on. They have faith in the quality of their products, which people according to Randy have kept coming back for. The hope that they have is that by next winter, it won’t be as slow as this one when they were first opening, because they’ll be able to grow and establish their takeout restaurant.