Why some Atlanta entrepreneurs are embracing shipping container storefronts
For years, the shipping container was a symbol of global trade. Now, they’re becoming a launchpad for Atlanta entrepreneurs.
Across the region, startups and even established companies are trying out the steel boxes to house their businesses.
There’s a 24/7 grocer in Pittsburgh Yards. A business park with two dozen container suites off Chattahoochee Avenue is home to hairstylists, barbers, a florist, a phlebotomist and a 3D-printing business.
Nationally, even Starbucks and Smalls, a chain of slider sandwiches, have tried containers to quickly open new locations.
The appeal is the same reason the shipping container took over global trade in the first place: it’s modular, durable and, at scale, cheaper and faster to build with than traditional construction, said Eric Rubin, who runs 1130 Chattahoochee Avenue Suites, the container office park.
“If you’re doing a one-off building, stick construction probably makes more sense,” Rubin said. But containers make a lot of sense to build with at scale, he said. “It’s very reliable, and with helical pier foundations, if we ever have, like, the apocalypse happen, this will be the last structure standing.”
Nourish + Bloom’s AI grocery container
Jilea Hemmings and her husband, Jamie Hemmings, co-founded Nourish + Bloom Market, which they say is the first Black-owned autonomous grocery store. The couple recently debuted the country’s first 24/7, artificial intelligence-powered grocery store inside a shipping container in Pittsburgh Yards, south of downtown — the company’s fourth location.
“By combining AI with autonomous retail, we can bring fresh groceries within walking distance for more families,” and it’s something that can be done faster than a traditionally built store, Jilea Hemmings said.
“This is bigger than Pittsburgh Yards, it is a blueprint that communities across Atlanta and across our country can use to address food insecurity through innovation,” she said.
Nourish + Bloom was born out of necessity.
Jamie and Jilea Hemmings created the company during the COVID-19 pandemic after finding themselves living with their children in a food desert. They opened their first location in Fayetteville in October 2020. The Pittsburgh Yards location opened with a $600,000 food access grant from Invest Atlanta, the city’s economic development agency, and is expected to serve more than 5,000 people each month.
“This container may be built with steel, cameras, artificial intelligence and computer vision, but its true foundation is hope,” Jamie Hemmings said. “Hope that every neighborhood has access to healthy food. Hope that technology should solve real problems, not just create convenience.”
Across metro Atlanta, 1 in 8 people struggle with food insecurity, defined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a limited availability to safe, nutritious food or an inability to acquire it in socially acceptable ways. Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said expanding access to fresh food has been a priority since he took office.
“For far too long, families in this community had to leave their own neighborhood to buy groceries. Now we don’t have to have any ZIP code without a grocery store,” Dickens said.
A container business park
About 8 miles to the north on Chattahoochee Avenue, a different kind of container development shows how far the concept can stretch beyond groceries.
What was once an industrial stretch of West Midtown near Inman Yard is now home to 24 shipping container suites arranged three stories high. Rubin said the containers began as a construction concept pitched to California municipalities, including Inglewood and Hawthorne, as a way to build modular affordable housing quickly.
Every suite has its own bathroom and a mini-split climate control system — so tenants don’t have to negotiate over the thermostat — and plumbing runs through a shared wall so each space can accommodate a utility sink or shampoo bowl if a tenant needs one.
That flexibility has attracted a mix of entrepreneurs who might not otherwise share a building. Dazzlin Gantt, a hairstylist from Macon, moved her business into the complex after leaving a space she said wasn’t being properly maintained.
“That’s when I rolled by, and I saw those (containers), and I decided to come in and inquire to see if they would be a good fit,” Gantt said. “We have our own shampoo bowl, our own restroom, all in the suite, so I don’t have to worry about sanitation from other stylists.”
Jason Zervos, who has been a barber for 23 years, is one of the tenants in the space and was previously a barber in a larger shop. Now that he leases his own container suite directly, he said, he has more control over his business and his clients have noticed the change.
“The fact that we have good parking helps; now they can just walk in like a traditional barbershop,” Zervos said, adding that the site’s easy access from I-285 and I-75 has made it simple for clients to find him.
Rubin said the goal is to give small-business owners flexibility without heavy-handed rules. Tenants can decorate and reconfigure their suites as their businesses grow, so long as they avoid adhesives that damage the steel walls or floors.
Developers and city officials both frame the trend the same way: Shipping containers offer a faster, more resilient way to build when a one-off project doesn’t pencil out with traditional construction but a portfolio of modular units does. At scale, the reliability of a steel shell, cut, moved by crane and dropped precisely onto a foundation, starts to make financial sense.
As Atlanta continues to wrestle with both a shortage of affordable commercial space and pockets of food insecurity, container-based development is emerging as one answer city leaders and some private developers say they are willing to bet on.