Forget the big-box department stores. Places where consumers eat and drink are the new anchors of many mixed-use projects in Metro Atlanta.

Restaurants are being sought first in the leasing lineup of major mixed-use projects in Metro Atlanta, overshadowing soft goods retailers like department stores in their overall ability to drive anticipated foot traffic, a panel of experts said during Bisnow’s Atlanta Mixed-Use Summit last Wednesday.

“We think that food, beverage and restaurants really create the culture and community,” Toro Development Co. Vice President Kimberly Goetz said during the event at 1200 White St. in Atlanta. 

Goetz said Toro, which is developing The Medley mixed-use project in Johns Creek, focused on leasing the retail portion of the project to food and beverage vendors first before courting service retailers, especially in the soft goods sector.

As consumers spend a growing share of their income on food services, commercial real estate is increasingly relying on their growth to gobble up new space, with food and beverage retailers taking up a total of 20% or more retail space last year, according to an ICSC study.

Consumers spent more than $100B on restaurants and coffee shops as of the summer of 2025, according to a CoStar report, a more than 50% jump since the start of the pandemic, with the 50 latest quick-service restaurants opening more than 2,700 locations more than they shuttered in 2024, a 20% increase from 2022 and 2023. 

Toro captured a slew of food and beverage retailers at The Medley, the mixed-use project at the corner of Johns Creek Parkway and McGinnis Ferry Road, including Shake Shack, Stir, Tonic House, Rena’s Italian Fishery & Grill, Northern China eatery, Fadó Irish Pub and Summit Coffee. 

Toro earlier this year announced a second phase for the project, called Encore, which will add 20K SF to the 125K SF retail component of the overall project. The firm signed restaurants The Nest Cafe and CT Cantina & Taqueria to the new lineup, Urbanize Atlanta reported. Those leases helped Toro lure soft goods and other retailers, including Sephora and Trader Joe’s, she said. 

“There's also a lot of F&B out there who are expanding, so you can really hit those hard, and that's what we did,” Goetz said. 

Food and beverage tenants have increasingly grown critical for retail projects, especially in mixed-use developments where density and design can drive foot traffic, and the projects often incorporate residential and office components. 

“If you watch a city change … it starts with food,” Morris & Fellows founder Cheri Morris told Bisnow in an interview after the event.

Morris & Fellows developed the suburban downtown retail projects at such city centers as Alpharetta City Center and Downtown Woodstock.

Morris said restaurant patrons are more likely to wander around the entire mixed-use project and therefore shop at other venues, the same way that shoppers at a major department store once drove traffic for major malls.  

“Restaurants have the clout to set the geographic trends of where the walking district of a city will grow,” Morris said, likening their power to how department stores lured the remainder of the retailers in indoor malls during their heyday. 

But Morris said for a long time, investors were skittish about relying on restaurants and eateries as the drivers for mixed-use projects, because many of the tenants lacked the credit of national retailers. 

But that view is changing. 

Commercial property appraisers are no longer penalizing retail and mixed-use landlords whose properties have large food offerings, according to ICSC. Historically, those tenants required a higher build-out cost with lower rents, which dampened property values. But recent studies have shown that food service is driving higher property sales compared to other retailers, according to ICSC.

“Capitalizing these is still very tricky, and yet I do see the credit markets being much more open to these noncredit retail villages as part of a mixed-use project,” Morris said. 

Lifestyle retailers are also having a similar effect, said Herbert Ames, the managing director of the retail landlord Edens. Edens secured the high-end gym chain Equinox as a tenant at its Buckhead Village retail center, the gym’s first Georgia location.

“I think restaurants have proven they can be a department store. We've also seen entertainment or fitness can be an anchor,” Ames said. 

But Ames cautioned that restaurants need a nearby population — and a project density with residential and office components — to make sure they don’t fail. But restaurants are often the lure developers use to bring in office tenants. 

“If you don't have an office population to serve these restaurants, they're going to fail,” Ames said. “If you don't have a restaurant, a lot of those big, especially office, users aren't going to want to commit.”