E&B Coffee is set to open in Nolensville this upcoming month. And if you read our “Best Coffee Shops” blog, you’d know we’ve been excited about this opening for some time.“I think this was maybe a year after I was just hobby roasting, we decided to step up our roast operation and testing the market just to see if we could build some following and a brand and we quickly did,” says owner Erin S. McAtee on when he decided to open a retail shop.
E&B Coffee started as a hobby but quickly grew into a passion for Erin, and his wife, Bethany - “E&B” for Erin and Bethany. “We really felt like we were supposed to start a business we could involve our children in. I’ve got three girls now under four-years-old. I was started to get excited about this vision to build a company that my daughters could be involved in where my daughters could learn about the world and about life through family and business. We wanted to pair that with this new and developed love for coffee. That gave us such peace in our spirits when we talked about the family thing and the coffee thing together. It was something kids could get their heads around younger, you know, coffee roasting, customer service in a shop, those kinds of things. And we were marrying it to something that we were just falling in love with.”
McAtee started roasting as a hobby after his wife bought him a roasting kit for his birthday. He instantly fell in love with the concept and immediately desired to make more. This started a passion that would turn into a full business just a few years later.
"We're excited to provide E & B Coffee with a location for roasting," says Tyler Cauble of The Cauble Group, the commercial real estate brokerage that facilitated the deal. "There's nothing more exciting than getting to work with passionate, talented business owners."
“Coffee is very much a trusted brand,” says McAtee. “Like many other brands that we encounter, but coffee is really a trust and experience brand. People develop trust in your coffee after they experience it with you or come out to your retail location or visit you in a Farmer’s Market and get to know the people and like the coffee.” McAtee says they learned all of this while setting up booths at multiple Farmer’s Markets all over the Nashville area, including Hendersonville, all the way to Franklin.
Through all the trial and error, they found Nolensville to be the best location for their shop, and they are set to open this month. They want to share an experience with their customers, rather than just a cup of coffee.
Through roasting they own beans, they are able to build their shop to their own liking, and make it completely unique. Quality of coffee is only good when the quality of service is high, “If the coffee interferes with their expected experience like they have this vision to go have this awesome 30 minutes recharge, and then the coffee is disgusting, it interrupts the experience they were hoping for,” says McAtee. “If the coffee shop is super snobby, and they don’t feel like they are cool enough to be there, there’s this other end of the spectrum that can happen where they can have amazing quality coffee but they don’t feel comfortable, you can wreck it in the other direction.”
They aim to make the best cup of coffee with the best quality of service.
They aimed to shift away from them as owners and focus in on why someone would come to their shop. It isn’t simply good coffee, it’s that some people want a break in their day. Their “motto” isn’t a simple answer, but it’s something every barista will need to remember, “I guess I want people to hear that,” says McAtee. “We are trying to build a place that can focus on their moment. That’s everything from how they’re treated by our baristas to how the place is set up and how we create our seating. It’s not a very big place but we added outdoor seating. We’re trying to create that space where people can have that moment and not only have a killer cup of coffee but just have their time. Chick-Fil-A has ‘My pleasure,’ and I think our thing is going to be ‘Enjoy your time.’ I think we’re here to help you do that. I want people to hear that. We’re setting up a place that’s about their time. It’s about their moment. That’s what we’re focused on.”
So enjoy your time at their new shop, and enjoy a cup of coffee.