The series’ inception began a month ago when the Avenue’s social media manager, Kyle Riess, 34, reached out to Willis, who ran a chicken tender review account. She’d previously reviewed the venue’s chicken tenders describing them as “hand-breaded and made with love.” Riess and Willis bonded over their passion for the bar’s tenders and brainstormed how to get the restaurant more attention. Willis, who does marketing for a nonprofit, suggested the monthly event for chicken tender lovers.
The waitress couldn’t bring the chicken dishes out fast enough to groups of couples and friends. Posters taped to the bar’s entryway read: “Cluck the Halls! A Chicken Tender Event.” It was the night of the bar’s recent monthly chicken tender event series created by Amanda Willis, 25, a self-described chicken tender connoisseur.
At the Avenue Bar in Allston one recent Sunday evening several dozen people in ugly Christmas sweaters filled the bar and ordered plate after plate of chicken tenders.
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“I really enjoy doing fun events here and if you look at our Instagram, you can see that,” said Riess, who was dressed in a full chicken onesie under a green Jameson Christmas sweater for “Cluck the Halls.” “So when someone else was excited to do it, I was like, hell, yeah.”
Willis, whose day job is working as a marketing specialist at the Doug Flutie Jr. Foundation for Autism in Framingham, wanted to create a nightlife event for people of all ages that did not feel “like a Facebook meet-up group.” When she first told her friends about the plans for her first tender party, they were excited and shocked.
“I think I screamed,” said Lauren Vitacco, 26, a friend of Willis’ at the bar.
November’s “Tendsgiving” was a blowout event that rang in over 90 tender orders in under the first hour, said Willis. She got celebrity guest and Boston resident, James B. Jones, from Netflix’s “Love on the Spectrum,” to host a live tender review to a packed restaurant.
A group of friends in ugly Christmas sweaters painted Blue Moon glasses and ate chicken tenders at Amanda Willis’ chicken tender party, “Cluck the Halls,” Dec. 15, 2024. Evan Lausell-Rodriguez
At “Cluck the Halls”, the bar partnered with Blue Moon Brewing to provide complimentary glasses and paint pens for a holiday paint and sip. Ally Evans and Joshua Read, a twenty-something couple who live around the corner from the Avenue, saw the event on Instagram and sat nestled in a corner with hot ciders and tenders. Evans painted a moon with a winter landscape, and Read painted a red rose.
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“It sounded like a very chill Sunday night,” said Evans, who works as a project manager at Boston University.
In January, Willis’ parties are expanding to Harry’s Bar and Grille, another Allston bar, after the restaurant group who owns both spots saw that the Avenue’s slow-day sales doubled during her events.
Riess said he was happy for Willis, but was also upset he has to “now share her with the restaurant group.“ The initial plan, she said, is to switch off between the Avenue and Harry’s roughly every couple of events.
Willis said that she does not plan to turn organizing events into a full-time job, at least for now. She described them more as a marketing experiment. It is rare to find a marketing gig that you can actually enjoy as it happens, let alone create yourself, she said.
Willis said that her day job was something she was passionate about, but that this was a fun hobby she could do on the side that combined her love for marketing, eating tenders and drinking beers with friends.
Kyle Riess, The Avenue Bar in Allston’s social media manager, checked on guests and helped bring out tenders in a chicken onesie. Evan Lausell-Rodriguez
“All the managers [at the Avenue] are really great,” said Willis. “It is cool getting to be creative in a weird way and finding people who also want to do that and match my freak.”
Getting to invite her own friends, who then brought friends of friends to the events, was a “nice ribbon on her weekends” that Willis said she did not expect.
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“I am just really proud of her for making something that allows us to also keep in touch with our friends, and no one is going to say no to ‘hey do you want to eat some chicken tenders and drink beers?’” said her boyfriend, Evan Lausell-Rodriguez, 29.
She hopes that her tender parties keep bringing in good numbers and has her eye on expanding to more tender restaurants—including the ones that she said still haven’t answered her Instagram DMs.
On Jan. 4, at Harry’s, Fireball Cinnamon Whiskey and Miller Lite are sponsoring Willis’ next tender party: “New Year, New Location.”
“I feel like if you are going to do something stupid, you might as well do something surprising, like a neighborhood chicken finger celebrity,” she said.
Izzy Bryars can be reached at izzy.bryars@globe.com. Follow her @izzybryars.