Wingstop was founded in 1994 in Garland, Texas by Antonio Swad. The first franchised location opened in 1997, and by 2002 the brand claimed to have served two million wings. In 2005, Wingstop began serving lunch and in 2009 it began selling a boneless product. Wingstop opened its first international restaurant in Mexico in 2010.

Between 2014 and 2016, Wingstop was the third-fastest-growing restaurant chain in the US as measured by both system-wide sales and unit growth, according to Nation's Restaurant News. In 2015, Wingstop went public at an initial public offering price of $19 per share. That year, their profits more than doubled.

In 2019, Wingstop began using the tagline Where Flavor Gets Its Wings. The next year, Wingstop became available for delivery in Dallas, Texas through DoorDash As of 2019, the Wingstop Team Member Foundation acted as an employee-funded nonprofit that gave money to other employees experiencing a financial hardship due to an emergency.