If it feels like Atlanta’s pop-up scene is especially potent, that’s because it is.
The city’s dining ecosystem is one where DIY operations can thrive, ripe with venues, opportunity, and, most crucially, support. Pop-ups allow Atlantans to experience specific cuisines and creative dishes, from Laotian food to Polish brunch to Chicago beef sandwiches.
“With less overhead [than a restaurant], it gives [chefs] more freedom to do something interesting,” said Sam Flemming, founder and CEO of Punk Provisions and Atlanta pop-up database Punk Foodie.
But running a successful pop-up doesn’t come cheap.
Although pop-up operations don’t entail the same costs as a brick-and-mortar restaurant or food truck, these businesses encounter a set of unique expenses. Chefs fund pop-ups out-of-pocket and typically run the operation as or on top of a full-time job. Some chefs use their pop-ups as springboards for opening restaurants. Other chefs simply consider pop-ups as side gigs or passion projects.
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Avery Cottrell, whose Viet-Cajun pop-up Gene’s opened as an East Lake restaurant in late July, worked next door at Poor Hendrix full-time and took catering gigs to fund three pop-ups a month.
Basia Piechoczek, who started her Polish pop-up Beksa Lala at the end of 2023, quit her job at Habitat for Humanity to do pop-ups full-time. She regularly works six days a week and currently operates Beksa Lala from Burle’s Bar in the Old Fourth Ward and Elsewhere Brewing in Grant Park.
While it’s been hard work to earn success with Gene’s and Beksa Lala, Cottrell and Piechoczek love what they do.
Where to pop up
Pop-ups operating from venues like restaurants and restaurant incubators pay a fee to use the space. And popping up somewhere like a brewery or outdoor festival, which requires a special permit, means using tabletop appliances and electricity or gas to cook.
“Everybody has a different type of deal,” said Molli Voraotsady, who started Laotian pop-up So So Fed at former Ponce de Leon Avenue restaurant 8ARM in 2021. Pop-up agreements with venues may include servers, dishwashers, and bartenders. Voraotsady’s agreement with restaurants like OK Yaki in East Atlanta does not, making labor for a team of ten So So Fed’s primary expense.
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Seeking spaces to pop up never stops, even when a chef lands a regular gig occupying the kitchen on days when a restaurant is normally closed or a residency like Justin Dixon did for sandwich shop Humble Mumble in Midtown.
Some pop-ups pay to use a commissary kitchen to cook and prepare certain dishes or items before service elsewhere. Memberships for a PREP Kitchen space in metro Atlanta start with a $400 to $500 initiation fee, including monthly fees and hourly overage fees, making the initial month’s minimum cost $1,268.
Sourcing and storing ingredients
Ingredients and storage are other big expenses for pop-ups. Higher quality ingredients and smaller batches of food cost more and directly translate to increased menu prices.
“Often the chefs are very intentional about their ingredients,” Flemming said. “They’re going to buy locally, so they’re often using quality ingredients.”
Without a permanent kitchen and storage, pop-ups face additional concerns such as the shelf lives of ingredients and no option for delivering ingredients directly to a venue.
To solve these two problems, Voraotsady sources ingredients for So So Fed’s pop-ups on Sunday mornings, hours before service begins at her current residency at OK Yaki on Sunday and Monday evenings.
Piechoczek pays for a storage unit to house Beksa Lala’s catering trays, pop-up canopy, chairs, juicer, and bulk orders of Polish potato chips she previously stored in her home. A 5×5 storage unit in Atlanta costs anywhere from $16 to $60 per month.
Many of the ingredients Piechoczek and Voraotsady use, however, are difficult to find, hard to procure, and only available at specialty or international markets. Customers sometimes assume that international ingredients cost less, disregarding mileage, time, and money spent on gas.
Piechoczek dedicates one day a week to sourcing Polish ingredients in Roswell and Lawrenceville for Beksa Lala. Voraotsady adds that grocery stores on Buford Highway or the Your DeKalb Farmers Market don’t always stock specific items she needs for her pop-up, necessitating extra miles of back-and-forth to other stores.
Cottrell cited six different stores, from bulk grocers to specialty shops, for a typical supply run for Gene’s when it was a pop-up. Then there’s how specific dishes need to be prepared or cooked. For example, Cottrell sources recycled oak from North Atlanta Firewood for smoking his barbecue.
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The majority of pop-ups Flemming works with for Punk Foodie strive to find investors in hopes of opening a restaurant, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Like Gene’s, Lazy Betty, Little Bear, and Talat Market started as pop-ups, acquiring the cash to open through investors, crowdfunding, and loans or grants.
While running a restaurant is much more expensive than running a pop-up, Cottrell said he appreciates backing from investors and a streamlined process for acquiring ingredients. Gene’s ingredients are now delivered straight to the restaurant in East Lake, cutting down the risk of spoilage and added food waste.
Chefs running pop-ups need to calculate carefully when purchasing ingredients (not buying too much or too little.)
“In order to make the operation function at a minimum, I need to have food available and minimally one person to help execute the dream,” Piechoczek said. At the end of a slow night, there’s no opportunity to sell leftover food before it goes bad, resulting in waste.
“It’s not the hot dog you buy at the baseball game where you just slap some mustard on it and stuff it down your throat,” Flemming adds. There’s a lot of love and intention at pop-ups.”
Activating social media
Pop-ups also provide chefs with an opportunity to build a brand and customer base and to conduct live market research with real customers.
Social media marketing is particularly time-consuming but critical to getting the word out to future patrons on platforms like TikTok and Instagram. A pop-up’s social media prominence can directly affect business. In other words, good food isn’t enough to secure a kitchen residency or even a one-time pop-up gig.
“If I’m a brewery, I would love to have Soupbelly because [Candy Hom’s] going to bring more customers,” Flemming said of the importance of social media marketing for a pop-up and having a large following. Many followers of pop-ups like Soupbelly become steady regulars and offer free advertising via word of mouth or their own social media accounts.
Flemming notes that Smyrna-based Indian barbecue pop-up Dhaba BBQ has a strong social media presence, despite being a newer pop-up. He credits Dhaba BBQ founder Jay Patel for his social media savviness in quickly boosting the pop-up’s profile.
Supporting the scene
“The most expensive part [of running a pop-up] is the mental toll because you are manifesting your own destiny at that point,” Cottrell said. “It’s all your own money, so you run a risk of nobody coming and then you’re out like $500 or $600 for all your product.”
Cottrell notes that he’s sacrificed time with his family to ensure Gene’s success in getting it from pop-up to permanent restaurant. Pop-ups, in general, are often an isolating endeavor, requiring single-mindedness. This is especially true if it’s a full-time job or the end goal is to open a restaurant.
Voraotsady, Piechoczek, and Cottrell do feel supported by their fellow pop-up chefs in Atlanta. Collaborations aren’t unusual between pop-ups and you’ll see these chefs pitching in when needed, lending out equipment, staff, and themselves to other pop-ups, sometimes without even being asked.
“There is a strong community of pop-up chefs in Atlanta that are very supportive of each other and are connected,” Flemming said. “It’s not a very competitive scene. It’s a more supportive scene.”
To locate pop-ups in your neighborhood, check out the searchable events calendar on the Punk Foodie website.