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Crema Coffee Roasters
Crema Coffee Roasters was founded in January 2008 by Rachel and Ben Lehman, who are widely credited as pioneers of Nashville's third-wave coffee movement — the shift toward treating coffee sourcing, roasting, and brewing with the same seriousness given to wine or craft beer. Crema's in-house roasting program launched in 2011, and the company is generally recognized as Nashville's original specialty coffee roaster, predating most of the city's now-crowded independent coffee scene. The flagship downtown location on Hermitage Avenue is affectionately called the "mothership" by Crema's own staff, and it houses more than just a café counter — a dedicated Coffee Education and Events Lab hosts public classes on brewing and sourcing, treating customers as students of the craft rather than just people picking up a to-go cup. Crema describes itself as relationally sourcing coffee from farmers the company knows and trusts directly, and it operates as a zero-waste roaster with carbon-neutral ambitions — a sourcing and operations philosophy that's stayed consistent as the business has grown to three Nashville locations plus a fourth in Brentwood, along with an e-commerce arm shipping beans well beyond Middle Tennessee. That growth hasn't diluted the original Hermitage Avenue café's role as the actual center of the business — it's still where the roasting, the education programming, and the company's identity are most concentrated, even as Crema's beans have made their way onto menus at cafés and restaurants across the region. National recognition has followed, with Crema named among the "100 Best Coffee Shops in America" by outside coffee publications. For a Nashville coffee list, Crema is the essential "this is where Nashville third-wave coffee actually started" entry — a 2008 downtown roaster whose direct-sourcing, education-forward approach helped define the city's specialty coffee scene before most of its competitors existed.
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Steadfast Coffee
Steadfast Coffee opened in 2015 in Nashville's Germantown neighborhood, describing itself as "an all-day watering hole for historic Germantown and beyond" — a framing that signals from the start this isn't a shop built purely around espresso and pour-overs. The café and restaurant serves breakfast, lunch, and evening starters alongside its coffee program, plus cocktails, functioning as much like a neighborhood bar as a coffeehouse depending on the hour. That dual identity has made Steadfast a genuine anchor for Germantown, one of Nashville's older neighborhoods that's undergone real redevelopment in recent years — the café has grown alongside that change rather than simply opening into an already-finished, gentrified strip, giving it a longer-tenured claim to the neighborhood than some of the newer restaurants that have since moved in around it. Steadfast has since expanded into its own coffee roasting operation, sourcing green beans and roasting them in Franklin, about 20 miles outside the Germantown café, with an initial lineup of eight distinct coffee varieties. That move from café-that-serves-good-coffee to café-that-roasts-its-own-coffee is a meaningful step up in ambition, one that puts Steadfast in more direct company with dedicated Nashville roasters like Crema and Barista Parlor rather than shops that simply buy in from an outside supplier. The café has built a reputation specifically around its commitment to flavor, transparency, and sustainable sourcing practices, earning consistently strong reviews from a customer base that treats it as a genuine all-day stop rather than a single-purpose coffee counter — the kind of place regulars might start with a morning pour-over and end with an evening cocktail. For a Nashville coffee list, Steadfast is the essential "coffeehouse and neighborhood bar in one" entry — a Germantown all-day café that's grown into its own coffee roaster since opening in 2015, anchoring one of Nashville's most historic, fastest-changing neighborhoods.
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