Today we’d like to introduce you to Sarah Kim from Our Bar ATL.
Thanks for sharing your story with us, Sarah. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
The Our Bar ATL name and story were borne out of a simple desire from a group of friends who’ve all worked in Atlanta’s hospitality industry for years and always yearned for a bar to call their own. In October 2018, we decided the timing was right to start making our own dream come true. Then over the course of a year, we painstakingly crafted a 90+ page business plan, searched exhaustively for the just-right space all over the city and drummed up funding with our hats and hearts in hand.
We spent all of 2019 with bellies full of butterflies. It was a frantic year, full of nervous energy and anticipation as we took an empty shell at 339 Edgewood Ave SE and turned it into Our Bar ATL, our new bar + kitchen with live entertainment. Our collective decades of hospitality experience influenced every square foot of Our Bar ATL because we finally had the opportunity to design and build our perfect place. Our small and efficient kitchen was inspired by the food trucks because we wanted delicious, down-to-earth food served in a creative pop-up style. We placed our bar right in the center because we wanted that 360-degree interaction and flow among our patrons and bartenders. We brought our DJ friends to help design our elevated DJ booth because music is such a defining characteristic of not only the Edgewood block but also Atlanta’s culture.
Our grand opening kicked off on February 27, 2020 – an amazing and emotional long weekend with our friends, family, neighbors and locals. Looking back, it’s easy to see how much we accomplished through the support and encouragement of the Our Bar ATL family. While other bars and restaurants struggle to create their team, it was the easiest thing in the world for us. We had every role filled from the get-go and that difference can be felt everywhere – from the design of the space to the culture and vibe of Our Bar ATL.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
The road to opening Our Bar ATL wasn’t easy by any stretch of the imagination. For our first foray into hospitality ownership, we took perhaps the hardest route by building out a new space instead of taking over a turnkey restaurant. Whether it was navigating the permitting process at City Hall or developing our first menu, it felt like every decision came with its own set of consequences to consider and stress over. As euphoric as we were when we first started, 2019 quickly brought us back down to earth and knocked some sense into our heads.
Finding the perfect space was harder than we imagined. We visited dozens of properties all over Atlanta for three to four months before landing at 339 Edgewood Ave SE Atlanta, GA 30312. With no hospitality ownership history, we reluctantly did away with our idea of a “perfect space” and instead strived for a good-enough space that we can make perfect for us over time.
After signing the lease in April with pounding hearts, we tentatively marked our calendar for a late summer opening. Over the next few months, the seemingly inevitable delays dashed our foolish hopes and like many restaurants and bars, we began pushing back our opening every few weeks. That was the hardest part for us – sitting around in permit purgatory while the pressure mounted relentlessly with few outlets. We spent most of late-summer 2019 waiting in ominous, nerve-wracking silence as we gradually became more frustrated, short-tempered and unnerved.
Little did we know that we would soon look back fondly at 2019 as a character-building, tough-love experience. As a new bar + kitchen, Our Bar ATL was woefully unprepared for COVID-19 when the mayor shut down dine-in service just three weeks after our grand opening in late February 2020. Already preoccupied by the excitement of finally completing our 17-month journey to open, we paid little attention to the early news about the pandemic and felt blindsided and behind-the-curve when the grim reality of COVID-19 hit us in mid-March. We closed our doors for two weeks as we scrambled frantically to find a way to survive. With our short business history and little cash reserves left after the build-out, we created our “Health Promise to the Community” on April 3rd and launched our Pop-Up & Go concept soon after as our dynamic takeout collaboration platform with local chefs.
This is our biggest challenge yet and it came at the worst possible time, but we are dead set on keeping the Our Bar ATL dream alive. Its story does not end here – we will not go quietly in the night.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
Pre-COVID-19, Our Bar ATL was meant to be a chill local bar + kitchen with live entertainment in a warm brick space and a come-as-you-are vibe. We created Our Bar ATL to be a comfortable, thriving and expressive space for our friends, locals and the creatives and artists in Atlanta. Three weeks after opening, we had to change our model due to the pandemic – just like every other bar and restaurant in the world.
We launched our Pop-Up & Go platform in early April and so far, have partnered with over 23 chefs representing a diverse and delicious range of cuisines. COVID-19 gave us the motivation and initiative to meet and collaborate with so many talented chefs and home cooks in Atlanta. It’s been our unlooked-for silver lining in these tough times. Showcasing a new chef & cuisine every two days out of our kitchen at 339 Edgewood Ave SE, our Pop-Up & Go takeout menus has been our answer to COVID-19 and paying rent.
Above all else, we’re proud of our friendships and our belief that we can surmount anything as long as we do it together. It’s a sense of belonging and spirit that has brought us all the way from napkin sketches back in October 2018 to our grand opening in February 2020. It’s also what’s going to get us through COVID-19 and past any other obstacles in our way.
What were you like growing up?
My childhood streak of independence led me into the service industry when I was in high school. Those early formative years as a server, hostess and bartender shaped my adulthood and make up a large part of who I am today. People close to me would describe me best as emotional – an empathetic dreamer who believes people define their own success, prefers to bluff in poker and loves to feed the fam. Our Bar ATL represents what Atlanta means to me and my friends.
Contact Info:
- Address: 339 Edgewood Ave SE Atlanta, GA 30312
- Website: www.ourbaratl.com
- Phone: 678-929-8380
- Email: inf
o@ourbaratl.com
Image Credit:
Surf Milian (@surfmilian)
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