Iron Hill Brewery, which entered the Atlanta market in late 2020 with a restaurant in Buckhead and in 2021 added a second location in Dunwoody, will soon close both locations, according to employees at the chain. The restaurants, located in "The Block at Phipps" and Twelve24 are about 7,800 and 7,500 square feet, respectively, and are expected to close in the coming weeks.
The restaurants featured an on-site brewery as well as a diverse food menu with vegetarian and "gluten-friendly" options and a weekend brunch menu.
In likely unrelated but still disturbing news, the EEOC sued the chain in late March alleging that management "illegally discriminated against an African American employee when it fired him because of his race and in retaliation for reporting discrimination against women and Hispanic employees." The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) claimed it brought the suit after first attempting to reach a pre-litigation settlement through its administrative conciliation process.
The restaurant has not commented publicly on the litigation which was filed March 25.
According to the Iron Hill website, they claimed to be "the most award-winning brewery east of the Mississippi."
Iron Hill's Buckhead restaurant (3535 Peachtree Road) occupies a dynamic location at the corner of Peachtree Road and Oak Valley Road, across from Phipps Plaza. The center in which it's located, today known as "The Block at Phipps," debuted in 1999, and until its early 2021 acquisition by Atlanta-based Selig Enterprises in partnership with an Ohio teachers' pension fund, was known as Lenox Marketplace. Real estate sources suggest that the Buckhead location has been quietly marketed for months, suggesting that their struggles have been ongoing.
The chain's Dunwoody restaurant (1224 Hammond Drive) occupies some of the ground-level retail space of the Twelve24 office building. Debuting in August 2021, the restaurant marked the 20th overall for the Wilmington, Delaware-based chain. Including the new Georgia units, the chain currently operates twenty-two locations across Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Georgia, and South Carolina.
The Buckhead restaurant is expected to close as of April 30, followed by the Perimeter restaurant as of May 31, according to an employee at the restaurant.
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