Atlanta brewery buys Eats brand, iconic restaurant moving to West End

But a few of those regulars couldn’t bear to say goodbye; together, they stepped in to rescue Eats.

Wild Heaven Beer owners Nick Purdy and Eric Johnson, along with longtime customers Brent and Amity Dey, approached Hatcher about carrying on the restaurant’s legacy before its doors ever closed, Purdy told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“The first moment that I was there and found out from Bob that there wasn’t already a plan (for the restaurant), I was like, we’re immediately interested,” Purdy said, who has been dining at Eats since 1994.

At 74 years old, Hatcher had no desire to continue in the restaurant business after Eats closed. When the group of four approached him about buying the brand, he agreed, especially since he had known the Deys for years. They were all so “gung-ho” about carrying on Eats that he had no doubt they would stay true to the brand, Hatcher said.

Credit: Courtesy of Courtney DiCarlo

Credit: Courtesy of Courtney DiCarlo

He let them acquire everything, including the recipes, logos, equipment and paraphernalia inside the building, down to the booths and decades-old wall hangings. Much of those beloved trappings will move into Wild Heaven’s West End space.

Eats will still leave its former home at 600 Ponce de Leon Ave. NE to relocate into Wild Heaven’s West End taproom where the brewery’s beer and the Eats menu will both be available.

Mexican restaurant El Tesoro is preparing to move out of Wild Heaven and relocate to another space in the Lee + White mixed-use development, according to a news release.

“There’s going to be, I think, a feeling when you get to Wild Heaven West End that you’re going to feel a lot of what you know as Eats, and that’s going to be very intentional,” Purdy said. “Our hope is to not be a tribute band, but to be like the band.”

The menu will remain exactly the same, and Purdy said they even plan to one day bring back the pasta bar, which was discontinued at the original Eats around COVID-19. While they may have to raise menu prices a bit, “our hope is to find ways that the menu will always feel like the Eats that everybody knows and loves, and that includes the value proposition,” he said.

Credit: Courtesy of Bryan Bankovich

Credit: Courtesy of Bryan Bankovich

Purdy hopes moving to the West End will benefit Eats since part of what hurt the restaurant’s business were disruptions from traffic and lane closures on Ponce, as Hatcher noted in a previous interview.

Levi Nichols, a longtime Eats manager who has been running the restaurant for Hatcher for years, will move over to the new location to help maintain the brand that Atlantans love, and Purdy said they’ve made sure Hatcher knows he’s welcome to “haunt the place” and hang out as much as he’d like.

Hatcher is happy to be retired, but he’ll stop into the restaurant from time to time, he said. It’s a big turnaround from early October when the end of Eats was nigh.

“It makes me feel real good, and I hope it succeeds. And I was really wondering what I was going to do with all that stuff on the walls at Eats, because I don’t have any room,” Hatcher said. “I think it’s awesome that I can go somewhere and see it all. … Everything on the walls, there’s a story, and it has something to do with Eats.”

The story of Eats is what moved Purdy and his partners to carry on the restaurant. In the past 30 years, it’s become a historic piece of Atlanta, a reflection of the city in the ‘90s where it felt like the people in Purdy’s generation were turning away from the corporate world to make and build new things, he said.

“A lot of people in Atlanta just took risks and tried stuff,” Purdy said. “I feel like Eats was just sort of a place where, you know, people that had a vision to try new things felt like this is a place where I could just meet people and talk and get together and have a good meal. It was something that we could always agree on.”

It’s a place steeped in nostalgia and good memories, but Purdy believes they can carry it into the next generation and “re-energize it,” he said. “Make it feel like it’s still an important part of Atlanta that was worth preserving.”