How did a former bank teller get NFL legend Randy Moss to invest in her restaurant? First, she reached out on Instagram.

How did Brittany Tolliferreo get retired NFL star Randy Moss to invest in her Chick-A-Boom chicken-and-waffle restaurants?

First, she slid into his direct messages. After Moss liked one of her sponsored restaurant posts on Instagram last year, ”we kind of were just talking,” Tolliferreo said. It was all business.

“We got on a couple of Zoom calls, and he came here, tasted the product, and loved it. From there, he became my partner.”

Moss will be in Southwest Philadelphia Saturday afternoon for the ribbon-cutting for the Chick-A-Boom drive-through at 2448 Island Ave., now the third location, after a Chick-A-Boom truck at LOVE Park and a concession at Lincoln Financial Field. The restaurant is across from SEPTA’s Elmwood Loop depot.

With Moss, Tolliferreo and partner Kirk Hightower said they plan to expand further. So far, they and Moss plan to open three restaurants in his home state of West Virginia: a sports club and two drive-throughs. They also want to open concessions on college campuses.

“I invest in people and in visions, not in companies,” said Moss in a statement. He said he was sold on not only Chick-A-Boom’s potential to become a franchise, “but a disruptive cultural property that can integrate with live experiences in sports, music, and digital.” He added that it was important for him to invest in Black- and family-owned businesses.

Working as a bank teller in 2019, Tolliferreo remembers being unfulfilled. “I was tired of working for someone else, tired of the monotony — just the same thing over and over and over and over again,” she said.

So over it.

Tolliferreo, 31, of Folcroft is a mother of two girls. She grew up in West Philadelphia, and attended the private Milton Hershey School, followed by three years of nursing school at La Salle University. Nursing, it turns out, also wasn’t for her, she said.

Just to see if she was on to something, she headed to her kitchen and made fried-chicken sandwiches

Unlike many fast-food chicken sandwiches, Tolliferreo’s contain two jumbo tenders, not breasts or thighs. (Raising Cane’s does this to great success, on a national scale.) She got some brioche buns that would hold not only the tenders but stand up to a heavy application of sauces and toppings.

“I just had some friends come over and try it, and they loved it,” she said.

The lightbulb moment.

“Honestly, it just happened,” she said. “I live in literally a food desert — nothing good to eat. So I’m thinking, we need something good here.”

She spotted a vacant restaurant, called the Realtor whose name was on the window, and opened her restaurant — “literally starting the business with $12,000.” She and Hightower — he handles the marketing and prefers to stay in the background — came up with the name.

“Chick for chicken, obviously,” Tolliferreo said. “‘A’ is the quality — A-1 — and then ‘boom,’ because this sandwich is no one-trick pony. All those flavors and sauces and toppings when they hit your palate, it’s boom.”

While business was good in 2019, she found that the storefront, at 1,200 square feet, was too small. She also wanted a drive-through window.

Tolliferreo closed the Folcroft location to open a drive-through at 46th Street and Lancaster Avenue in West Philadelphia.

That put Chick-A-Boom on the map. Shortly after the opening in 2020, the pandemic sent customers to seek pickup and delivery. But, she said, she closed that location after awhile because it was attached to a gas station, “and I want to stand alone.” The new location, which opened in the spring at 2448 Island Ave., is a former Checkers and also has a dining room. Most business is drive-through and delivery pickups, though.

Hot food needs to stay hot. That is the takeout challenge. Tolliferreo and Hightower use black cardboard boxes lined with foil. (One test sandwich, carried in an air-conditioned car the other day, kept its juiciness for an hour before the scent forced the driver to pull over and devour it. )

“This is not a typical drive-through where everything’s in a microwave and you’re just slapping something together,” Tolliferreo said. Everything is made to order, including the scratch waffles for the chicken and waffles that take three minutes. “I always try to teach my staff to thank [customers] for their patience, to trying to make them feel special,” Tolliferreo said.

She and Hightower also decided to sell branded canned drinks, which they call Boom Juice and Sky2O Water. The $3.25 cans, which can be recycled, eliminate fountain sodas and give them a better markup than commercial drinks, which means you can’t buy a Coke or Pepsi. “I don’t want to do like what everyone else does, with the plastic cups with the plastic lids,” she said.

Hightower said he was working with a local supermarket chain and national retailer on a deal to sell the drinks, with such flavors as peach tea and strawberry lemonade, in four-packs.

They plan to add salads and wraps to the menu, but not a grilled chicken option. “Strictly all fried,” she said. “Treat yourself.”

Another quirk: “We don’t even use ketchup,” Tolliferreo said — only the house-made Boom Sauce, a mild aioli.

Not that you’d particularly miss ketchup, given the specialty sauce (such as sweet Thai chili), slice of cheese, layers of coleslaw and pickles, and dusting of scallions on the sandwiches. On the Boom fries, the sauce is next-level as it clings to the scallion topping.

Tolliferreo’s goal for Chick-A-Boom is “to be bigger than McDonald’s.”

She paused. “Or as big as McDonald’s.” For herself, “I just want to create generational wealth and help others. That’s my main goal.”