These Nashville restaurants will say goodbye on their own terms as real estate prices edge out small businesses

When you walk into Fido in Hillsboro Village these days, you can’t miss the giant countdown clock, measuring the time until the coffee shop closes.

“It felt good putting that up. As sad as it is, it was sweet,” said Bob Bernstein, founder and owner of Fido.

Below the countdown clock, Bernstein has written a letter saying goodbye to the neighborhood — and the neighborhood is writing back. A blank book and a pen rest under the display, allowing regulars to share their own thoughts on what’s made Fido’s 30 years in business so special.

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Bob Bernstein stands beneath Fido’s countdown clock.

“It’s amazing to read some of these people’s stories about how they met here, how this was where they hung out while their kid was being operated on at Vanderbilt Hospital,” Bernstein said. “There’s funny, touching stories in there.”

There are still memories to be made before the clock strikes zero. Fido will serve as a wedding venue this year, and come spring, the birthplace of many dissertations for students from Belmont to Vanderbilt University.

In the past, Bernstein has signed his lease for 10 years at a time. But now, he’s on a special three-year lease to give people more time to say goodbye.

“To be honest, I waited to the very last moment to sign that lease, because I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it,” he said.

Nashville rent prices have skyrocketed since the last time Bernstein signed a lease, and he knew the next one would come with sticker shock.

“By that time, I’d been in business for 29 years, and I was older, past 60, and my kids were grown, and like, do I want to continue to do this?” he said.

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Bernstein’s other coffee shops, one in East Nashville and one just a few blocks away on Belmont’s campus, are safe for now. But Hillsboro Village is becoming too expensive for small businesses — especially for restaurants, which have much thinner margins. Since Fido opened in 1996, many of its neighboring businesses have come and gone, replaced with chains like Crumbl and Altar’d State.

Bernstein is part of a generation of small business owners that have shaped Nashville’s food scene. As this generation looks to retire, the future is uncertain for new blood looking to take their place.

“To start a small business, for somebody to do what I did 30-something years ago, would be very difficult today. Somebody with no experience, little to no resources, no credit history, no anything. That would be near impossible to do again,” Bernstein said.

It’s a concern shared by other titans of the city’s food scene who also have their eye on retirement. Across the river in East Nashville, Margot Café has a shorter timeline to say goodbye. Its last day is this June, on the 25th anniversary of its first day.

Margot McCormack, the titular owner of Margot Café, still has a framed menu from that first night.

“It’s sort of an interesting time capsule,” she said. “Look at the prices. Here, you can have pasta for $12. And you can have soup for $3.”

McCormack is still at the restaurant on her day off, which she puts in air quotes. Even when the café isn’t open, there are dishes to be washed, orders to be placed, and reservations to be made.

“We’re never really closed,” McCormack said. “I was just thinking on my way here that it’ll be one of the nice things that I don’t have to constantly think, ‘Oh, I got to go to the restaurant, I got to do this.’”

Like Bernstein — who McCormack calls a friend — she has several reasons for closing now.

“Honestly, it’s about the property taxes. It’s about the credit card fees. It’s the insurance going up 12%. So, by the time you get down to the bottom line, there’s less and less there all the time,” McCormack said.

But time is also a factor. McCormack wants to retire after decades in the business.

“It’s hard on your back, bending over, getting in the oven,” she said. “It’s hard on my arms and my hands. I have to have help using the can opener now and carrying heavy pots where I used to be able to do that all by myself.”

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Margot McCormack, owner of Margot Cafe, leafs through the guest book where customers shared their favorite stories from the cafe’s decades in business.

And McCormack wants the time to say goodbye — something she didn’t have when her other restaurant, Marche, was shuttered by the pandemic.

“It was just anticlimactic and lackluster for something that had been so great,” McCormack said.

Margot Café also has a guest book for people to sign — the same guest book from their first day in business.

“People have been leaving us these amazing notes and their outpouring of love. I haven’t even gotten to read it, I’ll break down in a puddle,” McCormack said.

People who worked at Margot and Fido have gone on to open their own places. In the Nations, a former employee has opened their own coffee shop, Stay Golden. Splitting off the McCormack family tree is City House in Germantown.

Retiring from this business is different from most other professions, McCormack said.

“People aren’t calling up the accountant going, ‘Oh my God, I can’t believe you’re retiring. This is awful,’” she said.

For Bernstein, it’s a similar story.

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The countdown clock to Fido’s closure.

“A lot of my friends start the conversation with, ‘Oh I’m sorry about Fido,’” Bernstein said. “But what I’m coming away with is, no, sometimes closing a chapter in your life is a good thing.”

Fido will be open through June 2028. Margot Café closes this summer.