Most businesses open with a plan: attract customers, build a reputation and gradually become part of the neighborhood.

The businesses that opened in 2020 had a different challenge. They were trying to introduce themselves while customers were staying home, dining rooms were restricted and many people were unsure when ordinary life would return.

Yet some North Atlanta businesses opened anyway. Six years later, several are still serving the communities that took a chance on them.

The Bagel Hole, Cumming

On June 22, 2020, Gary and Cathy Trentacosta opened The Bagel Hole on Peachtree Parkway in Cumming. Gary had spent decades working in corporate kitchens, but the shop represented something more personal: a lifelong dream shared by the couple.

The timing could hardly have been more difficult. The restaurant opened while businesses were operating with masks, distancing rules and limited confidence about what the next week would bring. The owners have said their first customers arrived masked and distanced, while the staff continued wearing masks for a full year.

What began as a single Cumming bagel shop has since grown into a regional operation. The Bagel Hole now lists locations in Cumming, Alpharetta, Dawsonville and Braselton, along with a second Cumming location. Its menu still centers on hand-rolled bagels, sandwiches, pastries and cream cheese spreads, but the business has moved well beyond the scale of its first storefront. The Bagel Hole’s story and current locations

The formula is simple enough to understand. A bagel shop can serve a quick breakfast, a family weekend order, an office gathering or a catering event. It can become part of a routine, and routines are often what carry local businesses through uncertain times.

Confections, Suwanee

On McGinnis Ferry Road, Confections opened its original bakery and café in fall 2020. The Korean-French bakery brought together fresh breads, croissants, cakes, pastries, coffee, tea and specialty drinks such as yuzu tea.

It was a particularly difficult moment to introduce a café built around both food and atmosphere. The business had to sell products that could be taken home while gradually establishing itself as a place where customers could sit, meet and linger.

That combination appears to have helped the bakery find room in the local market. Confections now has locations in Suwanee, Duluth and the Johns Creek area, with its menu extending from everyday pastries to custom cakes and specialty breads. The original opening and expansion were reported by What Now Atlanta, while the bakery’s current locations and offerings are listed here.

A bakery also has an advantage that many businesses did not: its products can serve both ordinary days and important occasions. A morning pastry is a small pleasure, while a custom cake turns the business into part of a birthday, graduation or family celebration.

That kind of connection is difficult to create through advertising alone. It develops one order at a time.

Big Blue Swim School, Johns Creek

Not every business in this group is a small independent restaurant. In Johns Creek, Big Blue Swim School opened its first Atlanta-area location on June 22, 2020, after its planned spring opening was delayed by the pandemic.

The location at North Bridges Shopping Center introduced a year-round swim program for infants, toddlers and older children at a time when many families were reconsidering nearly every activity outside the home. The school’s current program includes lessons beginning at three months of age, advanced instruction and adaptive swim lessons. The 2020 opening was announced by Johns Creek Patch, and the Johns Creek location remains active today.

Swimming lessons are different from destination dining. Families do not usually visit once because something looks interesting; they return weekly, often for months or years. The business becomes part of the family calendar.

That may be one reason service providers were able to find a path forward during the pandemic. When a service solves an ongoing need, customers are not simply deciding whether they feel like visiting. They are deciding how to keep an important part of family life moving.

Marie’s Italian Deli, Cumming

Marie’s Italian Deli opened years before COVID, but its story belongs in this series because its biggest expansion arrived just before the shutdown.

The family-owned Cumming restaurant had been operating since 2012 when it expanded in February 2020, adding seating, a larger bar area and an expanded bakery. Then the pandemic arrived in March.

Instead of waiting for the dining room to return, the Smith family created new ways for customers to experience the restaurant at home. Marie’s offered quarantine date-night meals with wine to go, make-your-own pizza kits, parking-lot trivia nights and a take-and-bake cooler stocked with prepared Italian dishes.

The business did not simply preserve its existing model. It turned the restaurant into a deli, bakery, market and source of family meals that could be carried home. Today, Marie’s remains open on Atlanta Road, serving breakfast, pizza, subs, pasta, desserts and catering orders. The restaurant’s 2020 adaptation was documented by North Georgia Living, and its current menu and location are available here.

Marie’s offers an important lesson: survival is not always about waiting for conditions to improve. Sometimes it means finding out what customers need now and becoming useful in a different way.

What These Businesses Have in Common

The businesses that opened around 2020 did not all follow the same model. One sold bagels, another baked pastries, another taught children to swim and another transformed an Italian restaurant into a neighborhood food source.

But they shared something important. Each gave customers a reason to return regularly: breakfast, birthday cakes, children’s lessons, family dinners or familiar food prepared by people they came to know.

That is how a business becomes local. Not simply by opening a storefront, but by entering the habits of the people who live nearby.

The pandemic tested every business, but it also revealed which places residents were willing to support. The businesses that survived are now part of the landscape—not because their openings were easy, but because they managed to become useful when the community needed them most.