Contemporary Mexican restaurant Alma Cocina is reopening in downtown Atlanta after a two-year hiatus, as first reported by Atlanta Business Chronicle. The restaurant will be up and running by the end of this April, after shuttering in March 2020 due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Fifth Group Restaurants, the company behind Alma Cocina, is now in the process of hiring an almost entirely new staff, and has made kitchen renovations and spruced up its dining area.
Alma Cocina in downtown temporarily closed the space due to sparse traffic in the area. That’s now changed since businesses and conventions are returning back to pre-pandemic levels.
“The food courts there were empty, and the offices were empty and even the hotels were empty during the week. So, it didn’t make a lot of sense [to reopen] for a while,” Robby Kukler, partner at Fifth Group Restaurants, told Atlanta Business Chronicle.
Fifth Group Restaurants brought back its Buckhead location in mid-2020, along with several of its other restaurants. The company has continued to pay rent for the space downtown thanks to revenue from these other businesses.
“It’s been a two-year evolution,” Kukler told What Now Atlanta. “We’ve had a lot of help and cooperation from our landlord.”
Downtown’s Alma Cocina will have its grand reopening on April 30.
This article has been update to include a quote from Robby Kukler.
Updated with a correction: Alma Cocina will open on April 30, not April 29.
