The thousands of people in town for the annual U.S. Poultry & Egg Association’s annual meeting at the Georgia World Congress Center don’t have to leave the downtown building for food.
The GWCC this week took the wraps off a $3.1 million renovation of what had been its long-standing Terraces Restaurant & Lounge. Instead of sitting down and being waited on, visitors now walk up to counters and order food cafeteria- or fast food-style.
Officials with the nation’s fourth largest convention center said they made the shift because visitors too often were going off campus to dine. The opening came during the three-day Poultry and Egg meeting, one of the biggest at the GWCC.
“No one really understood what it was … so they didn’t want to take the time to eat there,” Adam Straight, the GWCC’s senior director of project and program management, said of Terraces. “They would all go across the street to CNN Center.”
The Terraces was at the edge of Building B behind a waist-high wall
Food and beverage is one of the state-owned GWCC’s biggest revenue generators and upping its dining game in the area is critical in the ultra-competitive and overbuilt convention business.
The new dining option is more open with no walls. It includes a section of couches and tables for eating in front of a large-screen TV, an area of more than two dozen tall tables and a large open bar, the first for the GWCC, officials said. It has a small tasting room and tables are wired with Internet and power connections.
Executive Chef Matthew Roach said he expects to triple the business of Terraces, though he could not provide annual sales numbers. Around 1,200 people had bought food at the new restaurant in the first six hours of its opening on Tuesday.
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