Atlanta’s buzzy Italian import Yeppa & Co. is lining up a move into the Gulch, with plans to take over the ground-floor restaurant space at Caption by Hyatt and turn it into a street-facing dining room and terrace. If it clears design review, the project would add another full-service Italian option to a neighborhood that seems to reinvent its restaurant lineup every few months.
MDHA review and timeline
According to a filing with the Metropolitan Development and Housing Agency, the northwest portion of the Caption by Hyatt façade would be reworked to accommodate Yeppa & Co., including new exterior treatment for the restaurant entrance and terrace. The MDHA Design Review Committee is scheduled to weigh the proposal on May 19, per Nashville Post, which reviewed the project documents and meeting schedule.
Committee approval is required before any façade work, new signage, or tenant build-out can move ahead, so that meeting is the first key hurdle for the restaurant to clear.
Where the restaurant would sit
The ground floor of Caption by Hyatt offers roughly 7,110 rentable square feet, including an approximately 410-square-foot covered terrace and ceiling heights of about 18 feet, a layout clearly designed for a single high-profile restaurant tenant. The 12-story hotel lists about 210 rooms and opened late in 2024, and its leasing packet spells out the street-level footprint, back-of-house access, and tenant-ready condition of the retail space.
Those specifics are laid out in the Caption by Hyatt leasing materials.
Who Yeppa & Co. are
Yeppa & Co. is an Atlanta-born Italian concept that grew out of the Storico restaurant group and is led by co-owners Pietro Gianni and Stephen Peterson, the team behind Storico Fresco and Forza Storico. Existing Yeppa locations in Buckhead Village and along the Atlanta BeltLine lean into coastal-Italian cooking and design-forward interiors, with one outpost even built around a Formula One racing theme.
Menus at Yeppa typically feature entrees priced at roughly $25 and up, a bracket that fits comfortably into the Gulch’s established dinner scene. Local coverage has emphasized the group’s hospitality-first approach and why that model plays well in dense mixed-use districts. As detailed by Atlanta Magazine, the branding, pricing, and aesthetic are tailored to neighborhoods that trade on a certain see-and-be-seen energy.
What comes next
MDHA posts tentative agendas and design packets before each Design Review Committee meeting, where staff and members of the public can weigh in on projects like this one. If the DRC signs off on the exterior changes at Caption by Hyatt, the hotel and Yeppa & Co. would then move into permitting and tenant build-out.
From there, any opening date will hinge on how quickly permits are issued and how long the construction work takes. Meeting agendas and packet access are available through the MDHA Design Review page, which also explains how to review the materials and follow the process.
