Restaurant chain grows close to home

BRADENTON — After several years of aggressive national expansion, University Park-based First Watch is opening a location in its home market.

That new location will be in Bradenton, in an outparcel at the front of a Publix-anchored shopping center on the corner of Lockwood Ridge Road and State Road 70. The 3,000-square-foot restaurant is a few miles from the company's home office.

The seventh location for the breakfast-brunch-lunch chain in the Sarasota-Manatee market, the new First Watch will open Monday, Nov. 28, according to a release. It will have about 25 employees.