During his more than 30 years in the restaurant business, Nick Olympiadis never let on if he was under pressure.
Family, friends and former employees say he was so easy going it was hard to know there might be a problem.
“There would be times when it was really hectic, but he wouldn’t show it,” said Cathryn Cochran Olympiadis, his wife of 37 years, and a former employee. “He liked to keep things light.”
Lee Livaditis, who worked with Olympiadis in the 1960s at Zesto’s on Roswell Road, remembers his former boss as the consummate people person.
“He was a really upbeat guy,” Livaditis said. “And he was very patient, especially with a young guy like me.”
Not only was Olympiadis cool under pressure, but he was generous beyond words, his daughter said.
“At the coffee shop that my father and his brother owned, there was a gentleman who would come in for lunch every day,” said Michelle O. Constantinides, of Atlanta. “Sometimes he’d be the only one in there, but he’d be there. Well, when that gentleman got to the point where he couldn’t make it out anymore, my dad took his lunch to him.”
Olympiadis and his brother, Aristotelis Olympiadis who died in 2005, opened the Greek Coffee House on Roswell Road in the 1970s. The restaurant was popular in the Greek community, said their sister.
“There was often a line on Friday and Saturday nights, “said Katy Olympiadis, of Dunwoody. “It was a good place to get good Greek food in that day.”
A former employee of the Ambassador restaurant, Nick Olympiadis also ran a Fat Boy Jr. franchise in the ’80s before retiring in the 1990s, his wife said.
Nickolaos George Olympiadis of Milton died Thursday at Hospice Atlanta of complications from cancer. He was 79.
A funeral was held Saturday at the Holy Transfiguration Greek Orthodox Church in Marietta. He was buried near relatives at Greenwood Cemetery, Atlanta. Ingram Funeral Home & Crematory, Cumming, was in charge of arrangements.
Olympiadis was born in Galati, Romania. He came to the U.S. in 1958 with the equivalent of $7 in his pocket, to join his brother who was already established in the Atlanta area as a woodworker and cabinet maker. He found work as a gas station attendant and at a clothing factory, before one of his employers helped him chart a path to join the Army so he could become a naturalized citizen, his wife and daughter said.
He served in the Army for six years before moving to New York, where he married the former Rhena Tavaras. But she died in 1968, days after delivering the couple’s only child. Olympiadis eventually moved back to metro Atlanta and raised his daughter in the company of his sister and brother.
Olympiadis met his current wife, the former Cathryn Cochran, in the ‘70s when she worked at the Greek Coffee House. The couple eventually married in late ’70s and raised a son together.
A genuine love for people was likely what kept Olympiadis in the restaurant business, friends and family members said. Livaditis said he watched as his former boss took time to get to know people who came to Zesto’s.
“It was a different time, and things moved at a slower pace, but he made sure he knew the people,” Livaditis said.
Constantinides said her father’s love for people was never more evident than 15 years ago he found out he’d fathered a son from a relationship he had in the 1960s. The man sought out, and found, Olympiadis, his daughter said.
“My father welcomed our brother in with open arms,” she said. “That’s just who he was, and how much he loved.”
In addition to his wife, daughter and sister, Olympiadis is survived by two sons, Daniel Olympiadis of St. Louis, Mo., and Georgeos Nickolaos Olympiadis of Alpharetta; and three grandchildren.
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