In the Mix - Restaurant Industry News and Resources in Georgia

From games and music to outdoor activities and books, entertainment is adding value to the restaurant experience
By Nancy Wood

Westside Motor Lounge crew — From left, George Banks, Elizabeth Fletcher and Kelly Campbell of Westside Motor Lounge in Atlanta.

If you’re thinking about slipping into a neighborhood café for a casual dinner with a lone singer crooning from the corner, you’re most likely in for a surprise. Today’s consumer is looking for more when they go out, an experience mixed in with their food and drink. What they’re getting is Eatertainment.

A recent survey by hospitality marketing firm Seven Rooms revealed that nearly 1 in 3 people prefer a bar or club with an activity, food and drink in one place. The truth is experiential dining isn’t new. Millennials have long eschewed the norm for memorable experiences, and post-pandemic the masses are ready to get out, have a great meal, socialize – and be entertained.

In response, owners and operators are upping their games – melding chef-driven menus with top-of-the-line curated bar programs, live music and recreational activities to get people off the couch and into the world. With creative concepts, great locations and an often eclectic mix of enticing activities, Georgia venues are making all the right moves – attracting new patrons, building loyalty and increasing revenue – all at the same time.

Creating Destinations

There’s no shortage of venues across the state that offer just what consumers are clamoring for. But these new concepts go far beyond what started the trend – like Dave & Busters, for instance. They’re taking aim at the latest crazes like pickleball.

In Atlanta, restaurateurs Justin Amick and William Stallworth, the partners behind The Painted Pin, a boutique bar and bowling venue, and The Painted Duck, a duckpin bowling alley and gaming venue, are scheduled to open The Painted Pickle in September.

The 32,500-square-foot facility in Atlanta’s Armour Yards will feature eight pickleball courts with a full-service restaurant and bar.

When multi-functional destination concepts like that are the focus, location is always a critical factor, but size definitely matters. And what’s more appealing than several undeveloped acres just waiting for the right venue?

In 2020, that’s exactly what brought Kelly Campbell and Elizabeth Feichter, partners in Southern Culinary and Cuisine, together with George Banks, owner of Revel real estate company, to bring Atlanta’s Westside Motor Lounge to life. With their combined experience, they formed the perfect team to take on the three-acre site, part of the Lincoln Property Group’s 19-acre mixed-use development Echo Street West.

“George mentioned he was having interesting conversations with commercial developers, and they were seeing problems presented by COVID – like empty space and how to activate spaces,” Kelly Campbell recalls. “They also still had needs in development because they had residents, tenants and leases that required food and beverage.”

The timing was prescient. Banks, one of the team members behind Ponce City Market and Atlanta Dairies, has deep expertise in creating food hall and multi-tenant space concepts. While Campbell and Feichter, who by then had sold the Atlanta Food & Wine Festival concept and were managing it, were facing not only the cancellation of the festival but all of the other events they were working on.

“Echo Street West was the first development money going in English Avenue,” says Campbell, “so we needed to create a destination for people and it needed a very specific concept that would operate a specific way.” With their backgrounds in conceptualizing and staging large-scale events, as well as managing multi-tenant properties, the three quickly determined that they needed to combine forces and formed STHRN Hospitality Co. in 2021.

With the experience of COVID top-of-mind, they wanted people to be able to spread out, says Campbell. “We wanted to focus on that indoor-outdoor design and wanted to have things for people to do.”

The design also incorporated existing structures on the property and made full use of four large shipping containers that were there as well. It was an 18-month process from concept to launch, with Westside Motor Lounge officially opening in October 2022.

The venue features outdoor activities, including shuffleboard and cornhole, and has three buildings, a main bar and restaurant, an indoor seating for overflow and event space called Idlewild, and a smaller building called West Bar, which houses ping pong, table top shuffleboard, foosball and some arcade games. “The beer garden is in a 40-foot container,” says Campbell, “ and three 20-foot containers make up the stage.”

Guests can enter the courtyard and play the games free of charge, he adds. “Whether you’re sitting in the main bar or on the patio or the beer garden, we offer table service for food and drinks. We also have a walk-up counter and QR codes, so you can pick your food up and eat it wherever you like.” The menu is southern inspired, approachable and equitable in terms of fair prices, says Campbell. “We also wanted to make sure we had a strong cocktail program.”

Like every “eatertainment” development, Campbell says the team has tried to be thoughtful about programming the space. “We’re still in an area of town that’s a destination, so regular programming is important.” To that end, Westside Motor Lounge has trivia contests every Wednesday, music bingo on Thursdays and DJs on the weekends who spin old-school records to reflect the property’s vintage design.

“We wanted music to be a core part of the personality of Westside Motor Lounge,” says Campbell, who recently started incorporating live music into the mix, another growing trend.

Live Music Saves the Day

Tim Stevens, co-owner of From the Earth Brewery in Roswell.

For Tim Stevens, co-owner of East Roswell’s From the Earth Brewery with wife Lisa, music has always been one of the main focuses of his family-friendly brewpub. “Music was always one of our passions,” he says, and something that was part of the mix from the beginning. When the brewery opened in 2017, small live acts were staged on Thursdays to try to build weeknight business. When COVID hit in March 2020, the idea for outdoor concerts began to take shape.

“By April,” says Stevens, “people were crawling up the walls trying to figure out how we can do something safe together.” His solution? Drive-in style concerts in the parking lot in front of the venue. “Each car had a space, servers would go to each car with food and beverage and we would have a few sets of music.” The first event on April 18 sold out with 36 cars. “We actually transmitted the sound via radio transmission into each person’s car,” he explains, “so the sound quality was not awesome.”

From a 12’x16’ stage on a three-foot riser with a 20’x 20’ tent and a food truck to service the events, the concept took root. As the community-minded Stevens says, “It was a way to keep my team employed and for the community to have a safe option to get out of the house and see some live music.”

By late May, people could actually gather, albeit at a safe distance. Again, Stevens had a solution. “People had to be socially distanced by six feet in a group of four or six, so we took away the cars and used the parking spaces like a box.”

From those meager beginnings, From the Earth’s live concerts are now professionally staged in a much larger parking lot nearby, and today the Back Porch Concerts draw up to 700 people.

From the Earth Brewery hosts concerts that now bring hundreds of people to Roswell every month.

Over time, as his live music has grown exponentially, Stevens says coordinating, booking and promoting the events has changed as well. “At first it started in-house to keep people working,” he says, “and now I have outside help to book these larger acts, get the contracting done and help me promote it.” He also has a team of people who handle production, bringing in a tractor-trailer with staging, professional lighting and sound.

As other large venues have continued to open, Stevens says this year there will be fewer outdoor concerts and he’ll focus more on moving live music back indoors. “Last year, we did 36 concerts outside, and we’ve got 12 booked for this year.”

Staging shows on both Friday and Saturday nights every six to eight weeks makes sense with production and the high cost of staging, lighting and sound, which typically is anywhere from $12,000 to $15,000 a concert, he explains. “That way we can split the cost of production for two days rather than just one.”

Staging both ticketed and free music events inside gives Stevens some options for different ways to draw guests to the brewery. “For the indoor ticketed events, we take all the tables and chairs out and it really becomes a music venue,” he says. The free shows feature a late dinner and drink service with tables left in the dining room.

He has also made a substantial investment in indoor noise cancellation to help mitigate what he calls a “bouncy” sound from the interior’s glass, concrete and wood. “We really went all out to make it sound incredible inside,” he says. “It sounds like a listening room at this point.”

Although music is a big focus for From the Earth, Stevens is branching out with free comedy shows featuring rotating acts so guests see a different show every time. And he is constantly partnering with other businesses in the area not just to draw in customers, but support the community. One case in point is the Give Back program on Tuesdays. “We’ll pick a charity, school or church, and a percentage of sales go directly back to them,” he says. “It’s a fun, easy way for them to raise money for their cause.”

Making the Case for Books

Lucian Books & Wine owners Kate Barringer, left, and Jordan Smelt.

While a lot of lessons were learned by the industry during the pandemic, one thing became abundantly clear. People like books. In fact, the BookTok community on TikTok is very active with nearly 30 billion views. It’s been known to make many an author’s career – turns out, Gen Z is buying books again.

Certainly, you can browse your favorite bookstore and probably grab a coffee or snack, but some creative owners and operators are going a step further – creating curated libraries within their venues to reach their patrons.

At The Vibrary, a wine and book bar in the heart of Stone Mountain Village, owner Candace Walker has created an intimate space that serves organic and low-sulfate wines and light snacks and features books by Black authors and books with characters who are people of color.

For a very different experience, there’s Bold Monk Brewery on Atlanta’s thriving Upper Westside. Business partners Cindy and Alan LeBlanc and John “JR” Roberts have created a more “something for everyone” space. Described as a brewery, beer garden, restaurant, bookstore and coffee shop in one large space, it includes a “Library Loft” upstairs featuring titles on beer, cocktails, drink culture and travel.

Regardless of the concept that incorporates books into the mix, there is one common denominator: passion. For husband-and-wife team Katie Barringer and Jordon Smelt, merging their own love for books and wine resulted in the creation of Lucian Books and Wine, which opened in 2021.

It did take Barringer, who previously owned Cover Books and book installations at Atlanta Contemporary Art Center and White Space Gallery, and Smelt, a sommelier and alumnus of Bread & Butterfly and the now-shuttered Cakes & Ale, a little while to refine their concept though.

“It took us a few years figuring out which of those two elements would be the dominant one, and we realized that bringing food into it was the direction we wanted to go,” Barringer says. The result is a small, elegant space that seats 40 and is evenly split between books, wine and food.

At Lucian Books & Wine, guests can peruse and purchase books while they dine.

Like all experiential concepts, size and location are paramount. For Barringer, Smelt and their business partner, Micky Mixson, this was particularly critical. “Finding a space that had parking that was conducive to retail and had visibility conducive to a restaurant was harder than we thought,” she says.

After looking at more than a dozen spaces, the team landed in the heart of Buckhead, on a very busy, high-profile corner that, says Barringer, means a lot to the neighborhood.

“It’s a small space, and being able to do as much as we do in that space has been pretty amazing,” says Barringer.

The books are all hand-selected by Barringer and reflect her love of art, design, food, wine and photography. “They run alongside an entire main wall, and whether people are actively engaging or purchasing, they are front and center within the physical space itself.”

“The part of the space that isn’t dominated by books is dominated by our wine display,” she adds. The wine program is closely managed by Smelt and now has about 450 choices available by the bottle and a rotating by-the-glass list. (Even the wine list is a book!)

With the increased popularity of food over the last decade, the addition of a carefully chosen menu by chef Jason Paolini and his team brings in people who may not be as thoughtful or adventurous with wine, says Barringer. “It’s a gateway for people to come in and feel comfortable in the space and start to experience the other elements in books and wine.”

In addition to serving lunch and dinner five days a week, Lucian Books and Wine also holds a variety of events including wine tastings and wine-themed dinners as well as book signings featuring both photography and cookbook authors. For those who just want to purchase books at times other than lunch or dinner, appointments can be made as well.

While experiential options may not be for every concept, trying new ways to differentiate restaurants and bars is providing attention-grabbing opportunities for owners and operators across the state to attract new customers and keep them coming back.