Let’s Go to Jake’s: Fresh, Local, and Family-Owned in East Athens

Jeff Stover and his wife opened Jake's Place because East Athens needed a real neighborhood restaurant — somewhere you could get a proper breakfast in the morning, meet someone for lunch, or bring the family in for dinner without driving across town to do it. They named it after their son, Jake. That's really all there is to say about the name, except that it means something, and they wanted it on the door.

Before this, Jeff wasn't in the restaurant business at all — he spent years in sales for Bimbo Bakeries, working with grocery stores and food distributors around Atlanta. That job taught him a lot about where food actually comes from, and it left him with a strong preference for keeping things local whenever he can. So at Jake's Place, as much of the menu as possible is sourced from farms and producers here in Georgia rather than from a national supplier's truck. Right now, that mostly means a partnership with Market Fresh, a family-owned business out of Statham that works directly with a number of small farms around the Athens area to bring in fresh produce. It's a relationship Jeff plans to keep building on — he's actively looking for more local growers, bakers, and producers to work with as the restaurant settles in.

Jeff is grateful for the welcome he's gotten so far from other restaurant owners around Athens, and he's hoping Jake's Place can earn its place among the businesses on the East side, too. It's early days. The menu will keep evolving, the local partnerships will keep growing, and the goal hasn't changed since day one: build a restaurant this side of town can call its own.