Atlanta isn’t the ‘mecca’ for Black-owned restaurants you think it is
Bella Jones is determined to bring her dream of opening an Atlanta restaurant to life.
The Mississippi-born, Chicago-raised chef moved to Atlanta in 2016 and worked as a cook at Inman Park steakhouse Rathbun’s before becoming a private chef. As her reputation and clientele grew, she decided to pursue a place of her own to serve the public.
In 2023 she signed a lease to open Liz & Leon’s, a high-end concept she envisioned as “a culinary love letter” to her African American grandparents, in the South Downtown development.
But when former owner Newport RE pulled out of South Downtown, the development around Mitchell Street, leaving the project in question, Jones chose to walk away. She said the experience made her question whether or not Atlanta is truly hospitable to Black chefs.
“It left a bad taste in my mouth,” Jones said. “I had to literally step away from the culinary industry altogether.”
Jones isn’t alone. Metro Atlanta’s Black-owned restaurants play a major part in the cultural experience, and there is no shortage of Black chefs who long to share their talents in a dining room of their own.
Being a Black chef in Atlanta has advantages. There is a significant customer base that will support great Black-owned restaurants, and success stories are all around. There are also obstacles, including lack of access to capital and roadblocks to leasing or buying commercial property.
And these aren’t your average meat-and-three cooks. They represent a range of modern restaurants in Atlanta, from casual Southern cuisine to high-end tasting menus.
But while our plates and cups seemingly runneth over with more than 300 such establishments, beneath the syrup and sauce lies an unsavory reality, according to several of Atlanta’s top Black chefs. For them, this town may not be the bastion of culinary opportunity it appears to be.
Digesting the math
There are at least 23,000 restaurants in Georgia, and 43% are Black-owned, according to the Georgia Restaurant Association, which provides resources and advocacy for restaurants across the state. Although race-specific data is difficult to find (even despite efforts of dedicated foodies like Mayor Andre Dickens), that figure makes Georgia the state with the highest percentage of Black restaurants in the U.S., potentially making Atlanta the nation’s most dominant city for Black restaurant ownership.
“That number blows away the rest of the country,” said Scott Bierman, GRA’s vice president of government affairs.
In recent years the number of restaurants in Georgia has grown by around 1,000 per year. The average life span for a restaurant, according to software company Toast, is just more than six years, including those that opened during the COVID pandemic.
Still, Bierman said the restaurant business is traditionally difficult for any entrepreneur when you break down the math. Twenty-seven percent of a restaurant’s revenue goes immediately to food costs, which have risen in recent years because of inflation and tariffs. Labor costs are 33%. After subtracting indirect expenses like credit card processing fees, direct operating costs like valet services and utility bills, and rising costs of real estate, average restaurant profit margins range from 3% to 5%.
“It’s scary. It’s a hard business,” said Stephanie Fischer, Georgia Restaurant Association’s president and CEO. But Georgia is a restaurant-friendly state full of people passionate about local eateries, she insisted.
“At the end of the day, if you have good food, people will find you. It’s not always the case but now, more and more with social media, we’re all connected.”
A space for us
Deborah VanTrece, owner of restaurants Oreatha’s at the Point and Twisted Soul Cookhouse & Pours, moved to Atlanta from Missouri in 1994 to attend the Art Institute of Atlanta’s culinary school. It was there, after meeting other talented Black cooks, that she became determined to succeed.
“It made me realize I’m not as special as I thought, because there were all kinds of people doing what I do,” she said. That’s still the case today, VanTrece added.
Atlanta may lack resources, infrastructure and hospitality training, but does not lack talent. “Part of me wants to say ‘We full,’” she said with a laugh.
Although talent is often underestimated in Atlanta, VanTrece cautions against putting too much emphasis on the culinary art over commerce.
“It’s important for us to hone in on economics, how the city works, who’s in charge and where the money is as we are in producing the best fried chicken,” she said. We’re putting so much on our talent that we’re forgetting the part of running a business.”
Although Atlanta gave her a sense of place, it is a physical space that has thus far eluded the matriarchal figure in Atlanta’s dining scene.
“My biggest regret, and I still haven’t let it go, is not owning my own building. That’s one of the most important things,” VanTrece said. “That’s what I preach to (my daughter) Kursten (Berry). Before I die, I’m getting you a building.”
Property ownership will help Berry avoid what VanTrece said she encountered three years ago, when going through the process of deciding whether to renew her lease for Twisted Soul or finding a favorable lease in a new location.
She said a real estate broker she met while touring a potential space in Midtown asked her if she planned to offer hookah at her restaurant, which anyone who knows chef Deb would find laughable if it weren’t offensive.
“Some of the other chefs who don’t look like me don’t have to go through this. They’d be appalled,” she said.
Erika Council, founder of Bomb Biscuit Co., can relate. She started serving her signature biscuits during a weekend pop-up at former barbecue restaurant B’s Cracklin’ while working full time in corporate America. She steadily grew to a counter stall at Irwin Street Market, then a space in the Old Fourth Ward at 668 Highland Ave.
She remembers riding high on Bomb Biscuit’s 2024 wave of success. Her breakfast restaurant had become a sensation, and its high-quality food at a great value earned national media attention and Bib Gourmand status in Atlanta’s inaugural Michelin Guide. Council was also named a semifinalist for the James Beard Foundation’s Best Chef Southeast Award that year.
The euphoria waned later that year when she and husband Charles Reeves unexpectedly discovered the building she was leasing was being sold. Council and Reeves spent eight months trying to acquire the property. With savings and financial support from Invest Atlanta, the city’s economic development authority, Reeves said they were able to offer the former owner $2.6 million, the amount the building was said to be worth after an appraisal. The building was sold to a different buyer.
“When the landlord comes around and says, ‘I want to sell this building,’ even if we have the money to buy it, we’re at the mercy of that landlord’s decision. And too often that landlord decides not to sell it to us,” Council told the AJC.
Council and Reeves found a new space in Grant Park, and said Bomb Biscuit is now more successful than ever. The new location, which opened in June, gave them more kitchen space for additional ovens, increasing production.
They’ve secured a liquor license and are eyeing expansion. They’ve even purchased a mobile trailer that will tour Georgia and beyond with some of Council’s greatest baked hits, like the Glory-fried chicken biscuit.
Still, they believe ownership is important to avoid having to unexpectedly find a new building because of lack of ownership. Black entrepreneurs don’t own enough land and property in parts of Atlanta where restaurants seem to flourish, Council said.
“You can have a great business, but in order to sort of build on it, we need to be able to own commercial property. We can’t just settle for certain parts of town because people who own places don’t necessarily want to sell them to us. So it doesn’t feel like a Black mecca in that case, because the hurdles we face are bias.”
Beyond the grass wall
Miami native Cleophus Heathington, a James Beard Award finalist who has worked in several Michelin-recognized restaurants in and outside Atlanta, including Lazy Betty and The Optimist, said if you ask most people they’ll probably say Atlanta is indeed a Black restaurant mecca.
Still, he doesn’t personally believe it.
“Atlanta should be the Black food capital of the country. The culture is there, the people, the genius, but it still trips on its own feet,” he said.
Heathington recently became executive chef at Lucia, a popular Black-owned, Afro-Caribbean restaurant in Los Angeles. Despite this, he said if given the opportunity to have his own restaurant in Atlanta, where he gained early career experience in the kitchens of Lazy Betty and The Optimist, he said he’d take the chance.
He said he believes Atlanta restaurants do a poor job of cultivating Black diners’ palates and expectations for hospitality beyond the fast-casual. “That keeps Atlanta pigeonholed, so you’re going to see a bunch of fried fish and brunch spots, whatever,” he added. “Why aren’t we challenging and educating ourselves to try and do new and different things?”
Many Black chefs, he said, don’t know the full dimensions of Black culinary culture. “We know the surface — collard greens, mac and cheese, fried chicken and cornbread. But we don’t know the depths of our food. Our food is the foundational food for American cuisine, if there is such a thing.”
Jones agrees, lamenting what she sees as a lack of inspiration and ambition among modern Black chefs. Asked if Atlanta is an aspiring Black restaurateur’s nirvana, Jones said no.
“Right now, I’m not saying that Atlanta can’t be a mecca for Black chefs and Black restaurants,” Jones said. “There’s just not enough Black chefs that want to aspire. When you look at the landscape of Black restaurants in Atlanta, they’re not truly restaurants. They are grass wall, hookah. I don’t want nobody twerking over my pancakes. I don’t want the music louder than my conversation. I don’t want 30% surcharges and all these extra things that come with what we see in the city.”
Randy Hazelton, CEO of Atlanta-based H&H Hospitality, takes a purely entrepreneurial approach to the restaurant business. Hazelton co-founded Cafe Circa in 2008 on Edgewood Avenue, then sold the restaurant in 2012 and leaned away from independent concepts.
He became a franchisee, partnering with well-known quick-serve restaurant brands. He now operates 20 dining concepts in Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport and four other markets, which have earned tens of millions in revenue.
“Yes, I would say Atlanta is a Black mecca for people with ambition, drive, vision and the ability to execute,” Hazelton said. “However, to realize that potential, it requires being tapped into what the consumer wants, and what will actually work in our local economy, and what is built to thrive beyond a trend.”
He says some restaurant owners get caught up following or chasing temporary ideas as opposed to building sustainable businesses that can scale over time.
“There was a point when we were talking about everybody having grass walls, kind of becoming the standard around what the interior aesthetic might be, as opposed to whether that makes a difference in terms of what you’re trying to deliver to the customer. Or everybody doing a certain type of concept, whether that’s hot chicken, a brunch concept or a hookah concept. All these things have life, but I think chasing what or how everybody shows up in the present misses the long-term sustainability of a concept.”
He cites the multibillion segment of restaurants like McDonald’s, Domino’s Pizza and Chick-Fil-A as proof that diners aren’t all that complicated when you look at the data. “The top 5 restaurant companies on planet Earth are all fast-food. It’s all centered around burgers, pizzas, fried chicken one way or another.”
He said he believes restaurateurs must decide between being a cool kid, an artist or a businessperson.
“The cool kid wants to be at the peak of the trend, which is fun but oftentimes short-lived. The artist wants to express what’s in them, which is also awesome. But you’ve got to be OK with just being fulfilled putting out to the world what you want to express. The businessperson is studying what will work over time in the economy, micro or macro. The challenge for a chef is figuring out who you want to be, then getting comfortable with that.”
Whatever it takes
Like Jones after her South Downtown experience, pitmaster Bryan Furman quietly chose to step away from Atlanta’s dining scene last year, putting aside his ownership dreams, at least for now.
In 2024, the popular pitmaster told the AJC he planned to open a new concept, Bryan Furman Barbecue, by the end of the year. It was to be his first Atlanta-area restaurant since the one that brought him national acclaim, B’s Cracklin’ Barbecue, was devastated in a 2019 fire.
It was also a shift from his original plan to open in Riverside, not far from where B’s Cracklin’ was located. Furman purchased land in Riverside but came to regret the decision.
“Going in and buying property was one of my biggest mistakes — accountability I put on myself,” he said.
Prior to 2020, Furman’s strategy for opening restaurants, first in Savannah and then Atlanta, was to secure buildings where restaurants previously failed. He would invest between $60,000 and $100,000 in a space after researching the area’s potential customer base and demographic data.
After the COVID pandemic’s effects on the restaurant industry, rising costs of restaurant spaces, construction delays because of supply chain disruption and other factors made opening more difficult.
“The build out was three times what it was supposed to be when my plans went through,” he said of the parcel of land at 2012 Bolton Road, “so I couldn’t see myself paying $2.3 million to build out a restaurant when the original plans were $975,000. It doesn’t cost no damn $2.3 million to build out no damn barbecue joint — not for what I do.”
Those pressures drove Furman to cancel his planned reopening. After realizing the toll his dream was taking on his mental and financial health, citing the dual responsibilities of managing both food and business operations, he decided he needed a break.
Instead of going back to a brick-and-mortar, he focuses now on cooking at events around the country, which he said can be lucrative and easier to manage than an independent restaurant. He has also moved away from Georgia and preferred not to share where he’s now living, admitting he’s only interested in opening in metro Atlanta if he has partners.
“I’m not going into that by myself anymore. It’s just too much on me,” he said. “You can’t run it all.”
Partnership and decades of combined experience are part of Summerhill restaurant Southern National’s recipe for success, chefs Duane Nutter and Reginald Washington say.
Working together at One Flew South since the restaurant opened at Hartsfield-Jackson, the two are well-versed in hospitality and how to run a dining business. Despite their advantages, when Southern National’s doors first opened in 2017, it was in Mobile, Alabama, Washington’s hometown, not Atlanta.
They found better deals on restaurant space in the neighboring state and waited until summer 2023, when terms were more favorable for the Black, independent chef-owners, to move back to Atlanta.
Although they believed Atlanta would enjoy plated evidence of Nutter’s epicurean talent, they also found better deal terms on real estate out of Georgia. Nutter said some Atlanta landlords expected them to shoulder the cost of needed repairs, from bathrooms to heating and air, on signing leasing agreements.
“Reggie was like, ‘I know a bad deal when I see one,’” Nutter said, with a laugh. “So it was like sticking to your guns and knowing your worth. We can get lost knowing the food, but you may not know when the landlord’s trying to get you.”
Back to life
Today, after taking a hiatus following her South Downtown experience, Jones is gearing up and going after ownership again.
She’s planning a new restaurant concept called Gemini, intended to showcase her journey of self-discovery and celebrate the culinary legacies of her Black and Puerto Rican heritage. She’s promoting the restaurant with a pop-up dinner series she launched Nov. 1, where she served smoked coconut and collard green risotto, seared red snapper with coconut grits, and other dishes that pay homage to her roots.
“I’m excited to tap into a side of my culinary creativity that I wasn’t exposed to, and to also inspire other multicultural people,” she said.
For now, as she also plots to bring Liz & Leon’s back to life, Jones will host Gemini pop-ups in the future space of Sauce Queen Kitchen + Pantry, operated by chef India Johnson in Adair Park’s Academy Lofts building, the former home of a historic elementary school.
Chefs Washington and Nutter have diversified Southern National’s reach and offerings to ensure the restaurant’s survival. The Summerhill restaurant is also home to Pizza Boxx, a carryout-only concept selling a variety of 10-inch pizzas and chicken wings in flavors like lemon pepper wet. They’ve also secured a space in the Atlanta airport’s T-gates called Southern National Market, where they sell gourmet snacks and retail products like bourbon honey to travelers.
VanTrece also continues to expand her culinary empire. She has a catering business, cookbooks and a cooking show streaming on Hulu. “But I know in my heart of hearts I wouldn’t have been able — and it’s taken a minute — if I was still Debbie in Kansas City. It would have been a harder road; I’m sure of it.”
She encourages Atlanta’s young Black chef community to shy away from competitive urges and lean into collaboration. She suggests they educate themselves on industry resources like Invest Atlanta, which according to a statement provided to the AJC has provided $15.3 million in total capital investment — including $7.8 million in direct investment — for 362 Atlanta restaurants since 2020.
VanTrece also recommends exploring a range of culinary career options and specifically recommends young chefs reach out to Nutter, Washington, Todd Richards and herself for mentorship.
The thing that you’re good at and that you like to do, see if you can make it where other people want to buy it from you. Then you go full steam ahead,” Nutter said.
“Don’t worry about whatever, you know. As long as you got us, you have something to sell. It’s your passion, and it’s your dream, so go and do it. Scared gets you nowhere — scared money don’t make none and scared food doesn’t taste good.”
ABOUT THIS SERIES
“Atlanta: America’s Black Mecca?” is an original content series from UATL that explores that question with data-driven, thoughtful reporting that prioritizes the voices of locals and transplants who call this city home. These stories will appear in the paper and on UATL.com and AJC.com each month through January 2026.
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About the Author
Mike Jordan is senior editor at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Black culture brand, UATL. A longtime culture journalist, his work has been published in The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, National Geographic, Rolling Stone and others. Jordan won the James Beard Foundation’s 2024 Jonathan Gold Local Voice Award and was a 2023 finalist.
