Iron Hill Brewery informed customers September 25 that that it has closed all of its remaining restaurants. The company, which entered the Atlanta market in late 2020 with a restaurant in Buckhead and in 2021 added a second location in Dunwoody, closed its Buckhead restaurant last April. (The Dunwoody location was to have closed last year, too, but the company ultimately decided to keep it open.)
The EEOC sued the chain last March alleging that management "illegally discriminated against an African American employee when it fired him because of his race and in retaliation for reporting discrimination against women and Hispanic employees." The employee in question was a sous chef at the Buckhead location. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) found that the restaurant's conduct violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits retaliation for engaging in protected activity, such as voicing concerns about the discriminatory treatment of employees in your workplace.
Iron Hill settled the case last June and was ordered to pay $115,000 to the employee in question and was forced to sign a three-year consent decree that required it to provide nationwide training to its employees regarding Title VII’s prohibitions against racial discrimination and retaliation.
According to the Iron Hill website, they claimed to be "the most award-winning brewery east of the Mississippi." The chain ended 2024 with 19 restaurants. Earlier this month, the company closed three units in the Philadelphia market, including its original brewpub in Newark, Delaware, which had opened in 1996. The company cited a “changing business landscape” for the closures.
Today's announcement affects the chain's remaining sixteen restaurants, all of which are now closed permanently. In a release separate from what they sent customers, the company also indicated that it plans to file for bankruptcy.
Iron Hill's Buckhead restaurant (3535 Peachtree Road) occupied a dynamic 7,800 square foot location at the corner of Peachtree Road and Oak Valley Road, across from Phipps Plaza. The center in which it's located, today known as "The Block at Phipps," debuted in 1999, and until its early 2021 acquisition by Atlanta-based Selig Enterprises in partnership with an Ohio teachers' pension fund, was known as Lenox Marketplace. More than a year after Iron Hill's closure, the space remains vacant.
The chain's Dunwoody restaurant (1224 Hammond Drive) occupied 7,500 square feet of ground-level retail space of the Twelve24 office building. Debuting in August 2021, the restaurant marked the 20th overall for the Wilmington, Delaware-based chain.
Have you ever been to Iron Hill Brewery? Are you surprised to see Iron Hill Brewery close all of its locations? What would you like to see open in place of either location?
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1 comment:
We’ve been in Philly, Greenville, and both Atlanta locations. Sadly, not surprised. Big spaces, lots of beers, and extensive menus. All would’ve been okay if their restaurants were full. Gen Z drinks much less and everyone eats out less than pre-Covid. When you have too much inventory and real estate, the rest of business gets hard. And people want to go to thriving restaurants in this new reality of dining out.
Iron Hill’s survival has been unlikely for 6+ years because it’s a testator a different decade.
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