Toast on Lenox is a popular Atlanta brunch spot that's beloved for its good food and the warm and friendly service you typically receive from the moment you walk in the door. It opened in the city's Buckhead neighborhood in 2021, with a second location opening up in Midtown in 2023. It's sort of an upscale-casual place that serves updated takes on Southern dishes.
Many in Atlanta also celebrate its popularity because it's a successful black-owned business, co-owned by Tamara Young and Chef Virgil Harper. And that's fine; it's a free country, and people are welcome to celebrate what they want and what matters to them. Personally, when I go out to eat, I really only care about things like flavor and service, not the race of the owners. I grew up with parents who never considered someone's skin color a defining factor in who they are or what they're capable of achieving, and I've always followed their lead.
Unfortunately, that same racial lens that makes some people celebrate Toast on Lenox is now being used to punish it, thanks to our friends on the left.
Earlier this month, Georgia gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson stopped by the restaurant to enjoy a meal. Apparently, while he was there, he and Young talked and took a picture together. Later, Jackson posted the picture on social media, saying that as governor, he'll fight for small business owners like her, and he added that he was grateful for the good food and conversation.
The backlash was swift and fierce. Keyboard warriors across the state of Georgia and beyond began calling on people to boycott the restaurant because how dare this woman take a picture with *gasp* a Republican patron.
Some customers are rethinking Toast on Lenox after a photo showed one of its co-owners with Georgia Republican gubernatorial candidate Rick Jackson. pic.twitter.com/r4t27xjOVB
— Everything Georgia (@GAFollowers) July 17, 2026
Things got so ugly that the restaurant owners felt the need to speak out with their own social media post about how they welcome people from all walks of life and this wasn't any sort of political endorsement. They said that the owners regularly take pictures with high-profile guests.
Most adults can understand this. You can be polite to someone without necessarily supporting their politics. If, I don't know, Hillary Clinton (that's the first Democrat that popped into my head) came to my house and wanted to chat, I would be happy to. I may even take a picture with her. It doesn't mean I'm supporting her for any political office.
And I guess I should expect it from the Always Online crowd, but what I didn't expect was for Jackson's opponent in this race, the Democrat ex-mayor of Atlanta Keisha Lance Bottoms, to pile on. While she didn't necessarily join in the calls for a boycott, she didn't defend this particularly black business owner, despite the fact that she considers herself a champion of minority-owned and female-owned businesses.
As a matter of fact, she even posted a video on Instagram, citing the "online chatter" and explaining how she's such a big supporter of these small businesses that she doesn't feel the need to post pictures of them because her record speaks for itself, and she's not there to politic. But then she... goes on to politic. She complains about Jackson visiting black barbershops and female-owned businesses despite being anti-DEI, or Mexican restaurants despite promising to have illegal criminals deported, which is a statement loaded with exaggerations and racism within itself. Does she assume all illegal migrants are Mexican? Does she assume all Mexican business owners aren't citizens? Does she assume all female and black business owners and their staff couldn't become successful on merit alone and must have DEI? That's what I hear in that statement.
Finally, she sends a nasty little warning to these businesses to be careful who they hang around with.
"So I just want to caution all of us — I assume anyone who has opened their doors to Rick Jackson has made a calculated decision based on the benefits and risks of doing that, but don't allow people to piss on us and then tell us that it's raining," she said.
Opened their doors to? Aren't all businesses open to everyone? What century is it again?
Several prominent Atlanta residents and activists have criticized Bottoms' behavior, saying she should behave better than this.
What I take from it is that Bottoms and the Democrats only support minority-, female-, or black-owned small businesses when they shut up, get in line, and follow the rules set by the Democrat Party. Anything beyond that will be punished how they see fit, possibly with a coordinated campaign to ruin the owners' livelihoods.
They will be the first to tell you that these businesses are vulnerable and also the first to shut them down if they don't do what they say.
Jackson's campaign also made a good point. Not only did Bottoms show herself by "fanning the flames" of this gross attack on this restaurant, but she probably needs to stay quiet when it comes to her support for small businesses because her record ain't what she proclaims it to be. Her own draconian policies as mayor during the COVID-19 pandemic led to around 100 small businesses having to shut down for good.
Keisha's COVID policies caused around 100 Atlanta small businesses to close.
— Team Jackson (@TeamJacksonHQ) July 18, 2026
Now she wants to cancel Georgia small businesses based on who they let through the door. pic.twitter.com/uwdt4S5Cjf
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