Wild Heaven Beer and Fox Bros. Bar-B-Q Are Teaming Up in Toco Hills

Wild Heaven Beer and Fox Bros. Bar-B-Q are teaming up in Toco Hills, bringing the neighborhood a brewery and smokehouse rolled into one in 2024, according to a Facebook announcement.

Located in the Toco Hill Shopping Center, home to Salaryman, Spiller Park Coffee, Yumbii, and Top Spice Thai and Malaysian Cuisine, the collaboration between Wild Heaven and Fox Bros. opens early next year in a building centered around a courtyard at the complex. It appears a portion of the space was once home to French restaurant Petite Auberge, which closed at the shopping center in 2016 ahead of a move to Clairmont Road and its reopening as Petite Violette.

Expect both a brewery and distillery (part of Wild Heaven’s new farm winery program), a taproom offering beer, wine, and cocktails, a bar overlooking the brewing facility, and a kitchen operated by Fox Bros. serving many of the restaurant’s popular barbecue plates and sandwiches. All meats will be smoked on site.

While Wild Heaven co-founder and brewmaster, Eric Johnson, will continue overseeing operations at all of the brewery’s locations, the Toco Hills location will be led by Josh Franks. Franks was recently promoted from head brewer to brewmaster by Johnson and partner Nick Purdy in order to run Wild Heaven in Toco Hills, which will also include several beers only brewed at this location.

“We were drawn to this incredible spot due to the kind of secret courtyard tucked into a commercial center that has been a part of the fabric of Atlanta for decades,” Purdy says in a prepared statement. “Looking around the area, there seemed to be a missing element and the chance to fill a void was too tempting to resist.”

Johnson and Purdy founded Wild Heaven Beer 13 years ago in Avondale Estates and are considered early craft beer pioneers in Georgia. A second location opened in 2019 at the Lee and White development along the Westside Beltline in West End. Wild Heaven-West End features a location of coffee shop Finca to Filter in the taproom and a beer garden flanking the Beltline behind the building.

The Fox brothers first opened their now wildly popular barbecue restaurant 15 years ago along DeKalb Avenue in Candler Park. The Texas-style barbecue joint is famous for bringing Frito pie to the Southeast, but also includes equally famous dishes like the Tominator, a base of tater tots covered in Brunswick stew and smothered in melted cheese. The brothers went on to open the Que-osk in 2018 inside a converted shipping container on Ottley Drive and another full-service location at the Works complex in northwest Atlanta. A third location should open this year in Brookhaven.