Local restaurateurs Scott Kerns and Scott McCray, having recently acquired the property at 670 DeKalb Ave NE that once housed Kevin Gillespie’s Cold Beer and Slabtown Public House, plan to open an unpretentious neighborhood haunt dubbed The Baxter this spring, as first reported yesterday, Mar 21, by Atlanta Business Chronicle.
Speaking to What Now Atlanta by phone, McCray – who’s also the owner and CEO of LEAD Hospitality Group – says, “We just want to do a casual, fun place. We’re going to have some TVs in there, we’re going to do casual food, we’re going to make it real comfortable for people that are on the BeltLine to just jump off [and] come in.”
Operating as both a full-service and walk-up restaurant, The Baxter’s menu is set to include humble eats such as sandwiches, salads, and appetizers, with 12 beers on tap and some craft cocktails to wash it all down.
McCray says it’ll be the type of place that you can drop by “dressed in your jogging pants” and just “hang out.”
It’s a concept that co-owner Scott Kerns told the Business Chronicle was lacking in the area after he spent considerable time surveying the surrounding restaurants.
“One little niche that I felt was missing, especially with all of the condos and apartments and townhomes around, is that place that people could call their neighborhood spot,” Kerns said.
Despite the fact that they recently acquired the space, Kerns and McCray are already eyeing an end-of-April, early-May opening.
“It was kind of built-out already,” says McCray, “So we’re just doing a lot of color changes and some materials that are going to be used – like on the walls and stuff like that, we’ll kind of redo the patio area a little bit – but we’re not doing a lot of structural changes to it.”
