Atlanta pop-up veterans opening their first restaurant in South Downtown

Nearly a decade after launching one of Atlanta’s first pop-ups, The Plate Sale, husband-and-wife duo Mike and Shyretha Sheats will open their first restaurant, Mule Train, next year in South Downtown. Identical in all but name, Mule Train will continue The Plate Sale’s ethos combining Southern fare, local, seasonal ingredients, and hospitality. 

The couple took inspiration from Black culinary traditions and combined it with their own hospitality industry experiences, hosting dinners at home toward the end of Mike’s time at Le Cordon Bleu Atlanta.  

“I’ve always liked meat-and-threes and people doing real plate sales,” Mike said. “Just some average person, maybe on the side of the road, selling a rib plate or chicken plate.”

“We just wanted to host and have a good time, and the thing was good, simple food, [with people] stopping by to get a plate somewhere, going to a fish fry,” Shyretha added. 

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After a stint of hospitality gigs in Charleston, the couple returned to Atlanta in 2015, just in time to join the opening team at Staplehouse. That’s when they started formulating the concept behind The Plate Sale with friend and chef Angus Brown.

“Angus Brown was one of the first people we told because it was so fresh,” Shyretha said. “We pitched the idea, and he was like, ‘Why don’t y’all do it here?’”

In addition to hosting The Plate Sale’s first pop-up at Octopus Bar in East Atlanta Village, Brown designed the menus and logos. Sadly, Brown died two years later.

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Chef Maximilian Hines (Breaker Breaker, The Lawrence) attended that first pop-up in 2016.

“You could tell they had their own angle and perspective on both the food and cocktails. All of it was really original, yet familiar, and deeply Southern,” Hines said.

“They inspired me because they were the first wave of pop-ups you knew would have their own restaurant one day. They gave me confidence as a Black chef to not conform and to form my own path [with my pop-up] Stolen Goods,” he continued.  

Shyretha became familiar with downtown Atlanta as a student at Georgia State University. College introduced her to living in the city, and she often walked around downtown between classes. Even then, she questioned why there weren’t more businesses in the area. Years later, Sheats walked those same streets with her husband. 

“Over the years, we’ve just been admiring the area,” Shyretha said. “We would drive down and just park and walk around before any South Downtown development. It was kind of full-circle moment when we were invited to come see the [restaurant] space earlier in the year.” 

The couple is glad to work with a forward-thinking team that can help them navigate opening their first restaurant and truly believes in what Mule Train can offer South Downtown residents and visitors.

The potential to be part of the reactivation of South Downtown and its businesses, even after the World Cup passes, is empowering and surreal to the Sheatses. The couple also admire how the development in South Downtown aims to preserve the neighborhood’s history and buildings.

The name “Mule Train” references a spot where Mike’s family gathers back home in Oglethorpe. 

“They had a place where they would cook barbecue and drink moonshine and hang out. The community was always there, and it was called Mule Train,” she said, with the name paying homage to their ancestors, gathering, and celebrating Georgia “going down to the mule train.” 

Mule Train also references a Civil Rights-era campaign that Martin Luther King, Jr. worked on days before his assassination. 

“There was a caravan that left Marks, MS after he was assassinated and traveled to Atlanta for the Poor People’s Campaign,” Shyretha explained. “This is advocacy for poverty across the South, so it was called a mule train as well. It was an aha moment for us when we realized that was part of the mule train story.”

While it’s too early to predict a set menu, the couple work with the seasons, just like they do with dishes served at The Plate Sale pop-ups. Mike has a few items he knows he’d like to include, such as a smoked bologna sandwich, the fried quail served at The Plate Sale for years, and a lot of seasonal beans. Mule Train will offer both lunch and dinner.

“The menu will be a celebration of the seasons and based on what’s available and honestly, what we’re inspired by,” Shyretha said. “We’ll feature some dishes that guests may have seen from past menus [of The Plate Sale], but the menu will evolve with seasonal changes.”

Shyretha’s background is in bartending, with experience behind the bar at Staplehouse and The Gin Joint in Charleston. Mule Train will therefore include a small, intimate bar serving a tight list of cocktails and small-producer wines.

The couple don’t see opening Mule Train as the end of The Plate Sale, rather its natural evolution, and one they can continuing growing now that it will become a restaurant.

In addition to Tyde Tate Thai Kitchen and Spiller Park Coffee, now open on Mitchell Street, Mule Train will join other upcoming restaurants in South Downtown, including Glide Pizza, Todd Ginsberg and Josh Kim’s new restaurant, Bottle Rocket, El Tesoro, Broad Street BBQ, and Delilah’s Everyday Soul. 

Weekly food festival and market Smorgasburg Atlanta takes place at the intersection of Forsyth and Trinity in South Downtown. Construction also continues around the corner at the Gulch and Centennial Yards, home to Wild Leap brewery and distillery, in anticipation of visitors attending the World Cup next summer.

Mule Train, 87 Broad St., South Downtown. Opening 2026.