4 8 • r e s t a u r a n t d e v e l o p m e n t + d e s i g n • J A N U A R Y / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 8
4 RIVERS
SMOKEHOUSE IS
ON A MISSION
This BBQ chain made its first move
outside of Florida by turning an old
firehouse in Atlanta into a restaurant.
PROJECT PROFILE
BY TOBY WEBER
4
Rivers Smokehouse was born out
of a truly awful clerical error.
That error occurred in 2004
when John Rivers got a tele-
phone call telling him that his daughter
had a brain tumor.
A short time later, he got another
call: There'd been a mistake. His daugh-
ter was fine. The doctor's office had
contacted the wrong family.
John Rivers was relieved but deeply
affected by what had happened. He
reached out to the family of the sick girl
and offered them financial support.
Though the family declined, they
did agree to let him put his smoker to
work and host a barbecue fundraiser.
"We contacted a church and got it all
set up," says John Rivers' wife and 4
Rivers Visual Director, Monica Rivers.
"Five hundred people RSVP'd. We had to
figure out how to cook barbecue for 500,
raised a lot of money for a little girl and
my husband's passion was born."
This passion for serving people, for
making them happy with food and bring-
ing the community together, led to the
opening of the first 4 Rivers Smokehouse
five years later in Winter Park, Fla. Today,
the company has roughly 15 locations,
including its newest store, which opened
this summer in Atlanta.
Mission Driven
Given the chain's history, it's under-
standable that 4 Rivers operates as a
mission-driven business built around
its "barbecue ministry." According to
its website, the company seeks "to
use our God-given gifts to support the
4 Rivers Smokehouse took
over a 100-year-old firehouse
building in Atlanta. Images
courtesy of KarenImages.com