The dinner rush was just beginning at Candler Park's Fox Brothers BBQ Thursday evening when a strong thunderstorm slammed the area with high winds that toppled a huge white oak onto the popular DeKalb Avenue restaurant.
"One customer alerted everybody in the dining room that that tree's falling, and everybody got up and ran," co-owner Justin Fox said.
Friday morning, Fox was counting his blessings that no one was injured when the 100-year-old tree demolished the restaurant's main dining room and damaged a second dining area. Fox was also making plans to reopen the restaurant.
The eatery announced Friday night that it would be open Saturday for to-go orders only, pending its reconstruction. While two dining rooms were hit by the tree, "the main building structure, kitchen and smokehouse are still very much intact," the company said in an email.
"Thankfully, nobody got hurt," Fox told the AJC.
"That's all that matters, that nobody got hurt," he said. "The building and everything else is insured."
"It's a mess, but we're here to clean up and start rebuilding," Fox said Friday morning. "It's going to be a process, but we're starting today. We're going to try to be open for business in some capacity [Saturday]."
Fox said he wasn't at the restaurant that he's co-owned for five years when the tree came crashing down onto the building, a new catering van and an employee's Toyota Corolla, "but was here about five minutes after it happened. That's a phone call you don't want to get."
He said that while his employees who were at work were shaken up, "they stayed strong and made sure everybody got out safe. I'm proud of them."
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