For years, dinner options past the subdivision entrance off Bethelview Road or Castleberry Road meant getting in the car. Cumming City Center had the amphitheater and the sit-down restaurants. The Collection at Forsyth had the boutique shopping. Bethelview and Castleberry had a Kroger, a Publix, and not much else worth a special trip.
That changes this fall. A 16.94-acre development called Southard Exchange is under construction at that exact intersection, and it's bringing Forsyth County its first Shake Shack. It's also becoming the site of something Maepole, the Athens-born fast-casual chain, has never built anywhere before: a drive-thru.
What's Actually Going Up at the Corner
Southard Exchange sits at 5509 Bethelview Road, developed by Abernathy Development in a triangular layout across eight outparcel buildings. The site was approved with room for five separate drive-thru operations, which tells you something about how the developer expects people to use it. The confirmed tenant lineup includes Fifth Third Bank, Shake Shack, Maepole, and 7 Brew Coffee, with a Chick-fil-A being built on a separate outparcel by a different owner and a grand opening projected for September 2026.
7 Brew's building is designed with dual drive-thru lanes, which matches the chain's rapid national expansion strategy. The whole development sits between existing Kroger- and Publix-anchored shopping centers that together generate more than 3.2 million annual visits, according to Placer.ai data cited in a commercial real estate listing for the Chick-fil-A parcel. That traffic count is likely a big part of why this corner got picked at all.
Here's how the lineup breaks down so far:
| Business | What's Notable | Timing |
|---|---|---|
| Shake Shack | First Forsyth County location | Construction underway |
| Maepole | First standalone drive-thru in company history | Expected fall 2026 |
| Chick-fil-A | Separate outparcel, corporate-backed | Grand opening projected September 2026 |
| 7 Brew Coffee | Dual drive-thru lane design | Under construction |
| Fifth Third Bank | New branch | Under construction |
Why a Chain That's Everywhere Skipped Forsyth Until Now
Shake Shack isn't a scarce brand. The company entered 2026 with 373 company-operated restaurants and planned to open another 55 to 60 during the year. Its existing Georgia footprint already covers Alpharetta, Athens, Buckhead, Perimeter Mall, West Midtown, Old Fourth Ward, The Battery, and Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Forsyth County, sitting right next to Alpharetta, was the visible gap.
That gap closed for a reason that shows up in the county's own numbers. Forsyth County's population reached an estimated 282,805 in 2025, an increase of more than 31,000 residents since the 2020 census. A chain that plans site selection around rooftop counts and traffic patterns doesn't need much more than that kind of growth curve to move a market from "watch list" to "build here."
The More Telling Detail Is Next Door
The Shake Shack news is easy to notice. The Maepole news is more interesting if you know what to look for.
Maepole was acquired in May 2025 by Tony Townley, co-founder of Zaxby's, along with other longtime Zaxby's veterans including Blake Clayton Bailey, who spent nearly 23 years as that company's CFO and now lists himself as a business owner at Maepole. The brand's plant-forward, build-your-own bowls sit at the opposite end of the menu from fried chicken, but the franchising playbook behind the expansion is the same one that scaled Zaxby's into a national name.
The Cumming location will be Maepole's fourth restaurant in Georgia, joining two in Athens and one in Atlanta's Summerhill neighborhood. What makes it different is the format. This one is being built with a full dining room, an outdoor patio, and the company's first-ever drive-thru pickup lane, a prototype meant to serve as the template for how Maepole expands across Georgia and eventually the broader Southeast. Cumming isn't just getting a new restaurant. It's getting the test case for how a growing regional chain decides to scale.
Chef Peter Dale, Maepole's founder and culinary director, explained the site choice in terms of what the area already has:
growing families, active lifestyles and people who want better everyday food without sacrificing convenience
That's a business rationale, not a lifestyle claim about the people who live there. But it lines up with why this particular intersection, rather than a spot closer to GA-400, got the honor of being first.
Why This Corridor, Not Just These Chains
The pattern here isn't random. Much of Forsyth County's restaurant growth has historically clustered around GA-400, The Collection at Forsyth, Market Place Boulevard, and newer developments farther south. The Bethelview-Castleberry corridor, by contrast, has spent years serving a large residential population on the western edge of the county where subdivisions went up faster than the dining options meant to serve them. Southard Exchange is the first project sized to close that gap rather than add another option to an already-served area.
It isn't the only sign of that math playing out. Elsewhere in Forsyth, a shuttered Steak 'n Shake on Peachtree Parkway is being converted into a Slim Chickens location, and a new Whole Foods is under construction at Ronald Reagan Boulevard and Peachtree Parkway, expected to open sometime in 2026 and described as the first new Whole Foods to open in metro Atlanta in more than five years. Different corridors, same underlying signal: national retailers are reading Forsyth's growth as real and durable, not a temporary bump.
What This Looks Like on an Ordinary Weeknight
Once Southard Exchange opens, the practical shift for anyone living nearby is less about any single restaurant and more about what stops being a special trip. A coffee run through 7 Brew's dual lanes on the way to work. A Chick-fil-A pickup that doesn't require crossing GA-400. A Tuesday night when Maepole's drive-thru or patio is close enough to be the default instead of an occasional destination.
Dale put it plainly when describing what Maepole is trying to be for a community like this one: useful for a sit-down family dinner and just as useful for a fast pickup on the way home from practice. That's the actual value of a project like Southard Exchange. It doesn't change what west Forsyth is. It changes how many of the small daily errands can happen without leaving the neighborhood.
No exact opening dates have been announced for Shake Shack or Maepole beyond a general fall 2026 window. Chick-fil-A's September 2026 grand opening, projected in a mid-2026 commercial listing, may already be underway or could land a bit later depending on how construction wrapped. Worth a quick check before building a weekend plan around any of these.
Stevens Residential pays attention to corners like Bethelview and Castleberry because they tell you how a place actually functions day to day, not just how it's zoned or listed. If you want the next update as Southard Exchange fills in, or you're curious how a project like this tends to ripple through a corridor over time, Stevens Residential is a good place to ask.
