Nashville apartment dwellers aren’t the only ones feeling the sting from rising rent prices. They have also put the squeeze on small business owners.
The Wash was once a former car wash, but it is now East Nashville’s newest food hall. The new space is designed to host multiple vendors who may otherwise not be able to afford their own standalone restaurants.
WPLN News producer Alexis Marshall interviewed the restaurateurs and has a list of recommendations for anyone making their first visit to The Wash. She joined This Is Nashville host Khalil Ekulona in studio on Friday to talk about how she got the story.
Khalil Ekulona: How did you discover this story?
Alexis Marshall: Our arts and culture reporter Paige Pfleger had sent me an Instagram post just about The Wash and noticed that it was kind of an intersection of two things that I tend to cover, which are immigrant communities. There was a lot of international food moving into the place and kind of a business angle and economics. So I just decided to look into it a little bit further.
KH: A former car wash has now been turned into restaurant spaces. How did that come to be?
AM: Well, as it turns out, it was a little bit of a lengthy process. This was announced, I think, more than a year ago, and they ran into some construction issues. But essentially, the developer told me that it seemed like a really great opportunity to give people smaller spaces so that they would be inherently cheaper for restaurant operators to rent and kind of be like that stepping stone between a food truck or a pop-up and having a full size brick-and-mortar restaurant.
KH: Who are some of the vendors that are there?
AM: There are six bays at The Wash. In Bay 1, there’s a business called Two Peruvian Chefs. They have Peruvian food. In Bay 2, Soy Cubano. In Bay 3, The Poki, which has poke bowls. In Bay 4, Tootsie Lou’s Tacos. Bay 5 is East Side Pho, who I spoke to for this story, and in Bay 6 is a cocktail bar.
KH: Tell me a little bit about how The Wash makes space available to local businesses owners.
AM: The way that it works is The Wash, like the development itself, took care of building out the space. They put a lot of the work into the kitchens, and so that made it more affordable for people to come in and just sign a one-year lease. One of the people that I talked to for this story told me that instead of spending like half a million dollars building out his own restaurant as a standalone, he was able to get in the door at The Wash for about $30,000. That’s a way lower barrier for people who want to start up their own businesses.
KH: There’s a lot of reporting about the high cost and scarcity of residential spaces, but commercial space in Nashville is facing similar issues. Tell me more about that.
AM: Property values are high kind of across the board, and from what I heard from the developer in this story, that’s something that a lot of local business owners are struggling with as well. His main concern was that … if local people who have their own, like, innovative ideas aren’t able to find the space to prove their concepts and grow those businesses, that you’ll end up damaging the character of the city’s food scene long-term because only folks with a lot of money and resources are going to be able to grow their business.
KH: How do the vendors feel about having a permanent location?
AM: I don’t know if it’s permanent quite yet. I know that they’re on leases, but having a solid, like, brick-and-mortar location is going to be a game changer. I know that Gracie (Nguyen) was saying that she wasn’t sure if she and her husband would open a second restaurant if it weren’t for The Wash because they have East Side Bahn Mi. They were saying if they didn’t have a space like this, they might not be able to open this second concept at all. So it was a really exciting opportunity for them. For people like Javier Salado at Soy Cubano, it was really exciting because he’s been doing pop-ups and working out of an incubator kitchen, but this is his first time having like a solid place where people can consistently go and get his food.
KH: Do they see this as a sort of stepping stone?
AM: Yeah, I think that that is how a lot of people are feeling about it, and they specifically targeted businesses that have one or fewer locations — folks who either had one store or just a pop-up or a food truck. I think it’s really exciting for a lot of these smaller businesses to be able to get their foot in the door and get people to try their stuff.
KH: Are there any other supports that come from having their location there?
AM: Gallatin is a really busy street. There’s great visibility. It’s close to a neighborhood, so there’s plenty of folks who will pass by foot-traffic wise. It’s also interesting because a lot of the business owners are women and people of color. Gracie said that she had never been in an environment before where it was a lot of folks from that background.
KH: Do you think that more spaces like this will be created?
AM: At least this particular developer is interested in looking out for other sites where this can be replicated because there aren’t a whole lot of microrestaurant spaces. So I know that there’s definitely interest for it, and we’ll just have to see if they can find the space and make it happen.
KH: How did this differ from your normal reporting?
AM: This story was really fun to report. You know, a lot of the reporting around economics issues, I particularly work with a lot of immigrants in my reporting. A lot of times, it’s heavy stuff or the reporting on barriers, but it was really exciting to have a new lens for this story where you know this is a barrier that’s being reduced. Also I love talking about food and really getting into like the the nitty gritty of like what’s going on in the kitchen. So getting to go to a kitchen and talk with people about their food and their passion, that was really wonderful.
KH: Can you tell me more about some of the other vendors you met?
AM: Javier Salado — he grew up in Miami, and he has Soy Cubano that’s in Bay 2. He was really emphatic about just how exciting this opportunity was and the fact that he’s able to to test out his concept. I know that he was really excited about being able to offer Cuban coffee here in Nashville. He said that he’s found it really hard to come by. So he has cafecitos, which are like espresso that’s whipped with sugar to create like this sweet crema on top, and also, cafe con leche. I’m super excited to go and try some of that. Also in Bay 6 is a cocktail bar that I’m definitely going to have to go try out. When I stopped in the operator there was brewing kombucha, which is another thing that I have previously done, and it’s super fun like the fermentation science. So, there are definitely some really creative things happening in all of these kitchens in all of these spaces, and it’s going to be really fun getting to try them all out.
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