Six years ago, the hilltop where 1885 Grill now sits was, in owner Mike Schroeder’s words, just a hole in the ground—a 40-foot pit where an old oak tree used to stand, dug out for reasons long since forgotten by the people who lived there. Today, it’s the unofficial front door to a downtown that’s become one of Cobb County’s fastest-growing dining and events destinations. And the restaurant sitting on top of that old hole has a lot to do with why.
Acworth isn’t unusual in leaning on a restaurant to help carry a downtown comeback. Georgia’s Main Street network, which coordinates historic downtown revitalization statewide in more than 100 communities, has watched food and drink become one of the clearest signs of momentum in small and mid-size downtowns across the state, from Monroe to Thomasville.
Acworth carries its own Main Street designation, with 1885 Grill close to the center of it in more ways than one.
A Restaurant Built to Be a Restaurant
Most restaurants in historic downtowns move into a space that was built for something else. 1885 Grill wasn’t one of them. Schroeder and his business partner Miguel Morales—who also owns the original 1885 Grill in Chattanooga—worked with architects to lay out the 8,200-square-foot building around how a working kitchen and dining room actually move. Tablets in the dining room, a food-runner setup that limits server step count, bus tubs stationed near tables instead of tucked in the back; the whole design is built around efficiency. It sounds like a small thing until you’ve worked a packed Saturday night and realize how much distance separates a dropped ticket from a happy table.
The focus on flow has helped the restaurant do something remarkable: retain staff. Schroeder puts the restaurant’s turnover last year at around six percent, a fraction of an industry norm that regularly runs nearly double the national average. There’s even reportedly a waiting list of applications on the office desk.
What the Neighborhood Put on the Menu
The building’s design may have been borne of Schroeder’s restaurant industry instincts, but the menu was shaped by the folks actually eating it. When Acworth’s mayor told Schroeder he didn’t care for the restaurant’s coleslaw—too vinegar-forward, more of a Tennessee style inherited from Morales’ original Chattanooga location—Schroeder and his chef reworked it into a sweeter, more traditionally Southern version. Customers noticed the switch and the praise came pouring in.
Other dishes carry the neighborhood’s fingerprints more directly. Briggs Thomas Chicken, a Williamson Brothers BBQ-sauced chicken breast finished with goat cheese and tomatoes, is named for two friends of Schroeder’s who spent years asking him to cook it before it ever landed on the menu. A strawberry salad on the summer menu started the same way, borrowed from a friend’s Christmas Eve dinner and adjusted with blackened chicken before it became a seasonal fixture.
New dishes don’t survive on Schroeder’s opinion alone. His practice is to let the serving staff taste a new item before it goes on the menu to gauge their reaction, purely on the theory that servers who don’t believe in a dish won’t sell it, no matter how it tastes to him. He describes overruling his own judgment more than once after a dish tested well with the team, or after feedback (like requests for substitutable sides) pushed a special item into a permanent menu change.
The same feedback loop runs through the events side of the business. Event Coordinator Beth Gardiner regularly polls Instagram followers on what kind of spirits pairing or class they’d like to see next—a recent gin-focused dinner only came to fruition because enough locals asked for it.
Why Acworth said Yes
Before Acworth, Schroeder and Morales looked at Woodstock, Kennesaw, and Marietta. What tipped the decision, Schroeder says, was that Acworth’s leadership showed up in force to make the case for the city at a time when the site across from the future restaurant was still floodplain and the community center and roundabout that anchor the area now didn’t yet exist.
That relationship has outlasted the restaurant’s opening. Schroeder points to the process of adding a beer-and-wine retail license as an example: a new state law, a request to the city, and a 45-day turnaround from application to passed ordinance. When storms knocked out power along Main Street in July, he says the city was already texting him updates on restoration before he had to call anyone.
Growth That’s Still Coming
The city’s own account of its downtown renaissance lines up with that story. Acworth’s Downtown Development Authority has spent more than two decades and millions of SPLOST dollars on streetscape, parking, and infrastructure work in the historic district, leading to the city’s recognition as a 2025 PlanFirst Community by the Georgia Department of Community Affairs for its long-range planning. The 14-acre Logan Farm Park expansion and a new 44,000-square-foot community center, both completed in recent years, sit at the center of that push, and city planning documents describe downtown revitalization efforts extending along Main Street, Cherokee Street, Dallas Street, and Academy Street.
Nearby, developer Lynwood Group has an active 40-acre mixed-use project called the Logan underway near I-75 and Logan Farm Park, combining healthcare, life-science space, and multifamily housing—one more sign that the growth Schroeder bet on in 2020 hasn’t leveled off.
The momentum Schroeder describes isn’t slowing down. He points to a 110-room Marriott hotel planned down the street from 1885, along with a second restaurant concept from his group in the same area with roughly 2,500 square feet of green space out front—room for cornhole, live music, and picnic tables the flagship location doesn’t have.
A Packed Events Calendar
If the restaurant is the anchor, the event space next door is the engine that’s built 1885 Grill’s local following. Gardiner runs at least two community events a month beyond the restaurant’s regular service: a recurring wine dinner, a rotating spirits dinner, and one-offs that range from a father-daughter dance to a Mother’s Day tea that’s grown to accommodate three seatings.
The spirits and wine dinners lean local where possible, featuring a distillery or vineyard representative talking through the pours paired with a four-course menu built specifically for the night. Partnerships extend to other local businesses, too. Gardiner has been building a progressive-dinner format with a nearby wine market, and there are plans for a joint wine dinner with nearby Qualusi Vineyards.
When Bizarre Coffee’s new building was installed or the relocated Gather and Bloom moved into downtown Acworth, Schroeder’s team was reportedly among the first to welcome them with a gift basket—a small gesture toward a philosophy Schroeder describes bluntly: more good business downtown means more reasons for people to keep discovering the city, and by extension, the restaurant.
The Scoreboard
Cobb Chamber of Commerce named 1885 Grill its 2025 Small Business of the Year, and the restaurant was inducted into the Chamber’s Small Business Hall of Fame in 2026. Schroeder also says the restaurant is set to appear on the Atlanta Business Chronicle’s list of the region’s best places to work this year.
Ask Schroeder what he’s actually building toward, and the answer isn’t sales figures. “We’re part of the neighborhood,” he says.
The goal isn’t that every guest chooses 1885 Grill, just that they already know it well enough to walk in and figure it out. That’s the same logic that turned a Chattanooga transplant into Cobb’s Small Business of the Year, and it’s the same logic sitting atop the hole in the ground that used to be nothing at all.
1885 Grill, 4438 Cherokee St., Acworth, 1885grill.com/welcome-acworth
