Saturday, January 18, 2020

[CLOSURE ALERT] 4 Rivers Smokehouse Shutters Atlanta Restaurant

4 Rivers Smokehouse has closed its lone Atlanta area outpost.  The roughly 5,300 square foot barbecue restaurant at 822 Marietta Street opened July 15, 2017 and closed as of today, according to an employee reached at one of their Florida area restaurants. ToNeTo Atlanta was first to report on the planned restaurant opening on June 1, 2016.  Our report was met with widespread excitement and optimism, but clearly that did not necessarily translate to those "butts in seats."  

The restaurant posted the following message to its website today: 

"We want to thank all of our loyal customers who have supported 4 Rivers Atlanta for the past three years. Unfortunately, we have made the decision to close this restaurant. We have received strong guest and community support in Atlanta from day one, and for that, we are very grateful. Although we have no immediate plans, we remain optimistic that eventually, there will be a Smokehouse in the greater Atlanta area."  - The 4 Rivers Team

John Rivers opened the original 4 Rivers in Winter Park, Florida in 2009.  In the decade or so since, Rivers has expanded his family-owned “Barbecue Ministry” [all restaurants have community partnerships and are closed on Sunday] to thirteen locations, with a fourteenth coming soon to Daytona.   4 Rivers entry into the Atlanta market was its first attempt at expansion beyond its home state.  The Marietta Street restaurant was at one point meant to be the first of two in Atlanta (the other in Buckhead), but plans for further expansion were tabled.  

The Marietta Street restaurant, located in the old fire station No. 16, took longer to open than many had hoped, due to the fact that the restaurant owners went to great lengths to preserve the historic structure.  

The fast casual barbecue restaurant got good reviews (4 stars on Yelp and 4.6 stars on Google), buts its location, a "tweener," as some call it, likely made it difficult to get the kind of consistent volume it needed to truly thrive.  You see, the restaurant, located along Marietta Street not far from Georgia Tech, was not really in Midtown, Downtown or West Midtown, it was kind of between all of them.  

Are you surprised that 4 Rivers closed its Atlanta restaurant?  Where is your favorite barbecue in town?  What would you like to see open in place of the 4 Rivers on Marietta Street?

Please share your thoughts below.  

7 comments:

Georgia Water Tanks said...

Good restaurant great space. Construction in that area is nuts, so maybe when all those residences are filled it will be more convenient. I hope that another restaurant works better at that location, and 4 Rivers finds a better location for them in Atlanta.

ScottInTheATL said...

Looks interesting. Never heard of it.

Anonymous said...

That's terrible news. We discovered the original one down in Florida, and were hooked on the burnt ends. They're as good as any barbecue in town. We went 4-5 times to the Atlanta one. The building was super cool, but was not in a great neighborhood. We were sitting out on the patio one day and heard windows being smashed in. By the time we got out there they had broken into three cars. I'm sorry it didn't make it though, but between Fox Bros., Community Q, B's Cracklin, and all of the other places in town, it was going to be an uphill battle. It looks like I'll be driving to Tallahassee more often.

SB said...

Being from Florida and very familiar with 4R, they offer quality food and service but didn't do research on the ATL market. They should have opened on Roswell road in Sandy Springs whether ITP or OTP or in East Cobb on Johnson's Ferry. Not saying this as an insult to them and I personally live in town not far from where they did open.

oden said...

Driving 4-5 hours for ordinary bbq? Oh.

CB said...

I love 4Rivers (being from FL) but I kind of figured this was inevitable. Beautiful buildout (props to 4Rivers for that!) but the location was really challenging. The handful of times I went I was one of only 3-5 parties in the restaurant at dinner time. It's also hard to compete in ATL's amazing BBQ arena, although 4Rivers has built up an impressive FL following. Hopefully they will find a better-suited location in the metro in the future!

diana said...

Having moved to Atlanta last year after living in Orlando for 10yrs I was excited to see a 4Rivers location. Very sad this location has closed, hopefully they'll try Atlanta again in the future!

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