A version of this post originally appeared on August 3, 2025, in Eater and Punch’s newsletter Pre Shift, a biweekly newsletter for the industry pro that sources first-person accounts from the bar and restaurant world.
This send is the first in a three-part series on high-volume restaurants, presented by Square — the technology company that makes commerce and financial services easy and accessible.
Hop City Beer & Wine, according to founder and CEO Kraig Torres
Where: Atlanta, Fayetteville, and Alpharetta, Georgia; and Birmingham, Alabama
The backstory: Kraig Torres opened Hop City Beer & Wine in Atlanta in 2009, working 12-hour days, six days a week, to run the retail store with the help of four employees. Torres realized that the margins were too thin to make his store successful, but expanding would allow him to take advantage of economies of scale. He opened a second location in Birmingham, Alabama, with a bar, and then paired new shops in Atlanta, Alpharetta, and Fayetteville with restaurant concepts. His business now employs 185 people and brought in about $14 million in revenue last year. Here, he discusses the training and planning required to manage his busy concepts.
It starts before you’re even open. Having a really good POS system makes a world of difference. Being able to track, hour by hour, what your sales are over six or eight weeks makes it so much easier to predict where I need to have staff. I make sure to have all stations staffed, have staggered break times, and have a capable team leader who is prepared to tell a person, “No, I’m sorry, you can’t take a break right now. We have 17 tickets in the window.”
On training effective managers
Sometimes perspective helps everything. Almost all of our management team members have worked at multiple locations, because we want to make sure there is some commonality to how we do things. My kitchen manager in Alpharetta got hired part-time at Boxcar, our second restaurant, and worked his way up four different positions [to his current role].
Our managers are focused on the big picture. They are watching the host stand and they make sure to tell the host: “The window just filled up. I just got 13 tickets in two minutes. You can’t seat more people.” Once you have somebody watching the front door, watching the ticket window, watching to make sure the food doesn’t die in the pass — that’s how you run a high-volume restaurant.
On high-volume customer service
We do quarterly breakout training on guest service, where we talk about how to read personalities and how to touch a table when they’re angry [compared with] how to touch a table when they’re laughing [and] having a good time.
There’s not a one-size-fits-all approach to guest management. Recently, we got a two-star review on Google and I was able to track down the guest and call him. He had some very legitimate concerts about the speed of service, and that dropped ball led him to be extra critical of his food. He also had just gotten his property tax bill and was concerned with gentrification in the neighborhood, plus he noticed a recent price increase on our wings. He really just needed to vent for 10 minutes about his changing neighborhood. I met him a week later for a beer — on the house, of course — and he still comes in weekly. To me, it’s more about the magic of empathy and, sometimes, keeping my mouth shut.
On balancing the retail store and bar
At Boxcar, our restaurant in Atlanta, the retail is downstairs and the restaurant is upstairs [and] we really struggle with that. That’s our highest volume restaurant, and I think sometimes you’re focused on watching the door [and] watching the window, and if you have to triage your day, getting referrals down to our retail section is probably low on that list.
But in Birmingham, the bar side and retail side have amazing synergy. If we have a limited-release draft beer that every guest who comes into the store is going to want to try first, we’re going to make sure we build displays for that brand and [position] that specific beer opposite the tap. People drink the beer, turn around and go, “Oh, I can take a six-pack home.”
This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
