Restaurants, personal care and fitness among top tenants signing new leases in Atlanta

With historically low retail availability, not every tenant in the Atlanta area can find their desired space. However, service-related retailers that can’t be easily replicated online continue to secure new locations and make up the top types of tenants signing leases in the market.

Among these were restaurants, including fast-growing national brands; services like UPS and Verizon; personal care; gyms; and places aimed at pet owners like veterinarians and grooming stores.

CoStar reviewed about 800 new retail leases over the past 12 months, from the fourth quarter of 2023 through the third quarter of this year, to analyze the leading retail tenants signing deals in the market.

Restaurants made up a large share of new retail leases, signing over 25% of the analyzed new lease agreements in the Atlanta market over the past year. The most common tenant was pizza chain Papa Johns with seven leases, followed by buffalo wing chain Wingstop with four.

Papa Johns leases measured about 1,440 square feet on average and mostly landed in father-out suburbs, such as Kennesaw, Cumming and Buford. Wingstop’s new leases average about 1,530 square feet and are located in suburban areas of the market, including Villa Rica and Roswell.

Wingstop wasn’t the only tenant offering chicken wings. In Atlanta, a place known for its love of wings, over 10 total wings restaurant locations signed new leases over the past year. Touchdown Wings, which started in the Atlanta area but has since expanded mostly in the Southeast, signed for three new Atlanta locations, all in the suburbs, over the past year.

National service brands were also among the tenants with the most new retail leases signed in Atlanta over the past year, with Verizon signing seven deals and UPS signing six.

Verizon’s growth has been driven by Total by Verizon, the company’s prepaid wireless brand that launched in 2022. These leases, all in suburbs east of Atlanta, averaged 1,410 square feet. Verizon opened hundreds of Total by Verizon exclusive stores nationally in its first year of expansion in an effort to take on pre-paid competitors like Metro, Cricket and Boost.

The UPS leases were all outside the Interstate-285 perimeter and averaged 1,500 square feet. Many of the new locations are on the east side of the market in suburban areas, such as Snellville and Norcross.

Another growing sector is personal care services, including hair salons, barber shops, nail salons and spas.

Over the past year, personal care retailers collectively signed for more than 130 locations in the area, including three Waxing the City stores, three Great Clip and three Sugar Polish locations.

That’s not the only way people are visiting retailers to take care of themselves. Several fitness-related tenants have also been actively leasing space around Atlanta.

CoStar found more than 60 fitness facilities have signed leases over the past year, including gyms, yoga studios, martial arts, CrossFit, boxing and team sports.

Some of the area’s larger leases were for racket sports that are growing in popularity. More Than Pickleball signed a sublease for 29,350 square feet in the northwestern suburb of Buford. The building, previously an Hhgregg, was sublet in January from Catch Air, a children’s amusement center.

In September, Padel Haus, a padel club expanding out of New York City, signed a lease for 24,730 square feet at the 2022-built Westside Paper mixed-use development. The company had “been seeking wellness-oriented tenants as one component of their merchandising plan,” Shelbi Bodner, senior vice president at Bridger Properties and leasing representative for the agreement, told CoStar.

“We believe that today’s consumer has a prioritized interest in in-person experiences and community interactions that merge social connectivity with physical health,” Bodner said. “These wellness experiences, when placed in a dynamic mixed-use project like Westside Paper, drive overall consumer happiness and foot traffic.”

Planet Fitness signed the most leases in this category, with five, followed by HotWorx and Alloy Personal Training.

HotWorx is a virtually instructed exercise program. Users visit the locations to take the classes in the company’s infrared heat facilities. HotWorx opened its first location in Mississippi in 2017 and has opened more than 600 locations since then. Its new Atlanta locations include West Midtown’s Interlock, the northwest suburb of Canton and the southeast suburb of McDonough. The leases are each about 2,000 square feet.

About two-thirds of American households own pets, according to Forbes. In 2022, owners spent $136.8 billion on their pets, up 11% from 2021.

With pet-related spending increasing, the Atlanta area has seen about 20 pet-related leases over the past year, from veterinarians to groomers.

These new leases included four CityVet locations and three Scenthound stores. CityVet is a Dallas-based network of veterinarian-owned practices. Its new Atlanta leases were signed in several northern suburbs as well as Midtown.

The Midtown location is 4,600 square feet in the newly built Hanover Midtown apartment building. The building boasts amenities, including a pet spa with grooming, that are likely to attract pet owners as tenants.

“Tenants in Atlanta are warming up to the idea of being in a ground-floor environment, below more than 400 apartments,” Todd Semrau, vice president at Oakhurst Realty Partners who represented the landlord in the transaction, told CoStar. “Retailers want to go where consumers are, so these developments in Midtown, where young professionals choose to live, are where they are going.”

Another trend aimed at a specific audience was new vape and tobacco shops. There were about 15 new vape or tobacco shop leases signed over the last year in the Atlanta market, five of which by Xhale City.

Some areas have banned vape shops through zoning. For example, the city of Milton prohibited establishments where more than a quarter of aggregate retail sales were in vape products in 2019.