On the first Saturday of October, roughly two thousand people in scout uniforms, band jackets, and classic-car passenger seats will step off from the Princeton Lakes subdivision entrance on Johnson Ferry Road and walk a mile south to Olde Towne Parkway, tossing candy the whole way. It's the 28th running of the EAST COBBER Parade & Festival, a tradition that traces back to 1995, and if you've lived here more than a year or two, you already know the drill: line up early, bring a bag for the candy, and expect the festival tents to go up in the Johnson Ferry Baptist Church parking lot the moment the last float clears the route.
What you might not know yet is that this year the parade itself moved, and so did some of the storefronts along the road it walks down. Neither shift is dramatic on its own. Together they're a useful snapshot of what "normal" looks like in East Cobb in 2026: a beloved fixture adjusting to a calendar that stopped cooperating, and a stretch of Johnson Ferry Road quietly trading a few long-running names for new ones.
Why October, Not September
The EAST COBBER Parade has run in mid-September for most of its history. This year, organizers pushed it to Saturday, October 3. Publisher Laren Brown, who runs the event, told East Cobb News the reason came down to a scheduling pileup rather than any change in format: the first weekend of September was Labor Day weekend, Rosh Hashanah landed on the parade's usual weekend after that, and the following two weekends were the bookends of Cobb County School District's fall break. There was no clean date left in September, so the parade moved into October instead.
Everything else about it stays the same. The route still starts at the Princeton Lakes entrance (1223 Johnson Ferry Road) and finishes at 4651 Olde Towne Parkway, the parade still steps off at 10 a.m., and the festival, with its carnival games, food vendors, and booths from local scout troops and nonprofits, still takes over the south lot at Johnson Ferry Baptist Church (955 Johnson Ferry Road) right afterward. If you've heard this event called the "candy parade," that reputation is intact. What changed is the box on your calendar, not the experience once you're standing on the curb.
What You'll Walk Past Near the Start
Here's where the more interesting change shows up. If you park near the Princeton Lakes entrance to catch the parade's start, you'll pass a stretch of Johnson Ferry Road that looks different than it did at last year's parade. The Wendy's at the corner of Johnson Ferry and East Cobb Drive, a location that had been there for close to fifty years, closed abruptly in February. The closure fit a pattern rather than a local problem: Wendy's had announced plans to shut down roughly 5 to 6 percent of its nearly 6,000 U.S. locations in the first half of 2026, and this East Cobb store was one of them.
As of a report from July, that corner might not stay empty. A local outlet reported that Raising Cane's is looking at the site as a possible new location, which would make it the chain's third restaurant in Cobb County. Nothing about that is confirmed yet, no permit approval or signed lease has been reported, so treat it as a live possibility rather than a done deal. What is confirmed is the vacancy itself, sitting a few blocks from where the parade's staging area has been for years.
It's worth noting what hasn't changed on that same stretch. A short walk down at 1255 Johnson Ferry Road, the Market Plaza Shopping Center still holds Reunion Kitchen and Bar, which took over the old Red Sky Tapas & Bar space, and Bagelicious, the longtime bagel and deli counter known for New York-style bagels and house-made cream cheeses. Those two have been steady presences through all of this. The turnover on this corridor isn't universal. It's concentrated in specific spots, and the old Wendy's pad happens to be one of them.
The Same Pattern, a Few Minutes Away
Drive a few minutes over to Avenue East Cobb on Roswell Road and you'll find a version of the same story. Tin Lizzy's Cantina and the adjacent Tin Pin Game Bar, both run by Southern Proper Hospitality Group, closed for good as of December 31, 2025. That's most of a year the space has now sat empty. Rumors have circulated among residents that La Parrilla Mexican Restaurant could move in, but when East Cobb News asked the property's management company, Jamestown, L.P., directly, the answer was that no lease has been signed for the space yet.
What makes this worth mentioning alongside the parade route is the contrast sitting a few doors down in the same shopping center. Tenku Sushi Elevation opened its polished sushi and sashimi lounge there this spring. Luga Italian Eatery, from brothers Ben and Seth Gjuka, who also run the Giulia bakery a few doors away, opened last fall with a full Italian menu. Two new names have moved into roughly the same footprint where two long-running ones just closed. Avenue East Cobb isn't shrinking. It's reshuffling, and the reshuffle happens to be visible from the same roads the parade uses every year to bring the neighborhood together.
What's Actually New Since Last Year's Parade
If you haven't been paying close attention to the food scene between parades, here's the state of things as of this fall:
Open now: Tenku Sushi Elevation at Avenue East Cobb, opened this spring, and Luga Italian Eatery in the same shopping center, opened last fall.
Closed, no confirmed replacement: The former Wendy's at Johnson Ferry and East Cobb Drive, vacant since February, with a Raising Cane's location rumored but unconfirmed. The former Tin Lizzy's Cantina and Tin Pin Game Bar at Avenue East Cobb, vacant since December 31, 2025, with a La Parrilla location rumored but also unconfirmed.
Still standing, unaffected by any of it: Reunion Kitchen and Bar and Bagelicious at Market Plaza on Johnson Ferry Road.
None of this changes what the parade looks like on October 3. The bands will still play, the floats will still throw candy, and the festival will still fill the church parking lot the way it has for going on three decades. But if you're walking the route this year, or driving over to Avenue East Cobb afterward for dinner, you'll notice the neighborhood looks a little different than it did the last time you watched this parade go by. That's worth knowing before you go, if only so the empty storefront on the corner doesn't catch you off guard.
East Cobb has a way of absorbing this kind of change without losing what makes it East Cobb. A parade shifts two weeks. A corner sits empty for a season. A shopping center trades one set of names for another. The rhythm holds even when the details underneath it don't. That steadiness, more than any single opening or closing, is probably the real reason people who grow up here tend to stay, or come back to raise their own kids a few streets over from where they grew up.
If you're one of the people who's been watching these changes and wondering what they mean for your own street, whether it's worth exploring a move within East Cobb or just curious what your home is worth in a market that keeps shifting shape, Kenna Daws has spent years tracking exactly this kind of neighborhood-level detail. Get your instant home valuation and find out where you stand, no obligation, no pressure, just a clear answer from someone who knows this stretch of Johnson Ferry Road as well as you do.
