Best Startup/Incubator

Quynh “Q” Trinh’s GLOBAL GRUB COLLECTIVE tucked in an East Atlanta Village nook is an international food hall bustling with aspiring restaurants in start-up mode. Trinh sees the collective as an homage to her parents, who came to the U.S. from Vietnam as refugees with their eight children. A young couple in their mid-20s hosted the family of 10 until they were able to move into their own home a year later. By offering the pop-ups a base of operations, the collective helps the small-business owners hone their crafts and work out kinks as they grow. Trinh provides initial support so her partners have the infrastructure, capital, and experience to open their own successful brick-and-mortar restaurants one day. Currently, the Collective houses more than a dozen concepts, most of which flip daily or weekly. Among them are the Midnight Marauder, a late-night concept serving Spotted Trotter dogs; Mamoune’s home-style Haitian cuisine, featuring chicken or vegetables with rice and spicy cabbage; Chop Chop Next, which serves street food mashups like fusion dumplings and kabobs; and the Sunday-only Cuban rice bowl concept La Parada Cubana. Say good-bye to the days of fighting over where to eat; the Collective has just about everything. 479-B Flat Shoals Ave. S.E. 404-430-7613. www.wesukisuki.com. less...

DOWNTOWN PLAYERS CLUB has hosted dance parties, oddball art rock performances, plays, and a chess club, among many other happenings, but it’s the stuff that goes on around the shindigs that really makes co-founders Elizabeth Jarrett and Kris Pilcher’s space important. One recent night saw a performance of RISK Theatre’s Macbeth in the main space upstairs, a roundtable discussion among poets in the library, and the collecting of dreams by the Dream Collection Agency happening simultaneously. The goal in having such a hodgepodge of artists bouncing off DPC’s walls is to become a “clubhouse for creatives,” as Pilcher has put it. That community center aspect has distinguished DPC since its opening in December 2015. Artists need a place to try new things, with and without an audience. In order to take risks, they need a space willing to take a risk on them. less...

Since Atlast Clothing opened a brick-and-mortar shop eight months ago in East Atlanta Village, the two-year-old T-shirt brand has become an incubator for other small Atlanta-based labels it carries on consignment, including Lyfted, Leighterz, and Life Junkie. Though the space is shoebox small, Atlast extends its community reach by hosting recurring pop-up shops for local DIY fashion brands, mixtape releases for local indie artists, and customer appreciation barbecues. And its own line of affordable tees and tanks swell with “I heart ATL” pride. less...

Storico Fresco Pasta founder Mike Patrick is very serious about his pasta. So serious, in fact, that he will walk over to you and correct your posture if you are not holding one of his trays of homemade pasta correctly so it doesn’t get bruised or torn. You can taste such devotion and love in every bite. Before he brought his talents to Atlanta, Patrick spent years in Italy traveling from town to town, collecting recipes, and studying the art of pastamaking. His focus on lesser-known pasta varieties is especially exciting. Stop by the retail shop in Buckhead - an expansion from Patrick’s early Farm Mobile and farmers market days - and grab some casonsei, a half-moon pasta filled with roasted beets, smoked ricotta, and parmesan. Or maybe try one of the dried pastas such as the lumachelle (“little snails” in Italian) with hints of cinnamon and lemon zest. Patrick sources excellent, sometimes local, ingredients and each of his pastas is better for it. less...