Alex Ray, the Common Man Restaurant’s founder and owner, is bringing his famed logo – a farmer working in his field, pushing and leaning hard on a tiller to prepare the soil for planting – to the Epsom Traffic Circle, perhaps by late summer, an official said.

He’ll have nearly two dozen branches of that first vision that he turned into a reality more than 50 years ago on Main Street in Ashland. Ray’s latest entry into his family of restaurants spreads further his food empire, which had already spanned from Plymouth to Windham to Claremont.

The Common Man Roadside Market in Epsom will differ from other restaurants in the chain, which offer formal sit-down dining and sometimes a full bar. That’s the way it is at the Common Man on the South Side of Concord.

The Epsom model will offer drivers on Route 4 a NASCAR-like pitstop, for food and gas.

“For sure,” Cheryl Gilpatrick, the Epsom Planning Board’s representative for the Select Board, said when asked if she sensed a buzz within the town. “A lot of people will be excited, and it’s good for the town.”

According to Gilpatrick, Epsom’s Common Man Roadside Market is being built in the same manner as Ray’s restaurants in Manchester and Plymouth. It will occupy 5,500 square feet and include a convenience store, a sandwich shop and a drive-through restaurant. There will be no sit-down service.

The stores will open at 6 a.m. and close at 11 p.m. The gas pumps never close. There’s space for electric car-chargers, but the complex will purchase them only if a federal grant returns.

“At the time, there’s no federal funding for charging stations,” said Kathy Desroches, the chair of the Epsom Planning Board. “My sense is that they have indicated they would continue it, but who knows? They move at glacial speed.”

Still, town officials were happy with the pace of discussions. The Epsom Planning Board hosted a public meeting in Aug. of 2019 to review the site plans, proposing to build the complex at the Epsom Traffic Circle, where Mr. Gas used to be.

Town officials moved through the often arduous process to secure permits and keep the land and wildlife safe. They said it was easier than one might have expected, both with the state and the town. They received a permit for alteration of terrain.

Construction began a few months ago. Officials hope to have the project done by the end of the summer, perhaps in the fall.

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