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Fido
Fido opened in 1996 in Hillsboro Village, founded by Bob Bernstein — the same founder behind Bongo Java — as a coffee-roasting café built inside a space that had previously housed an actual pet shop, which is where the name comes from. In 2000, Fido's own coffee-roasting operation moved across town to East Nashville, and the Hillsboro Village location shifted its focus toward becoming a full all-day dining spot rather than a roaster-and-café hybrid. Since that shift, Fido has run as what's best described as an upscale coffeehouse and casual restaurant at once, serving breakfast and lunch built around organic and local ingredients alongside its coffee program. The coffee itself comes from Bongo Roasting Co., keeping a direct line back to Bernstein's original Belmont Boulevard café even though Fido has spent most of its life as its own distinct restaurant rather than a satellite location. For nearly three decades, Fido has functioned as a genuine community gathering space in Hillsboro Village — an artistic, welcoming room that's hosted students, professors, and neighborhood regulars through the entire span of the neighborhood's development around Vanderbilt and Belmont. Sourcing 100% organic coffee and leaning into locally sourced produce, dairy, and meats has kept the menu feeling considered rather than like a standard coffeehouse breakfast afterthought. Fido's owners announced in 2025 that the café would eventually close, citing rising costs and lease pressures common to long-running independent restaurants in a rapidly developing part of the city — a reminder that even the most established Nashville institutions aren't guaranteed forever. For now, though, it remains open and pouring the same Bongo-roasted coffee it has for most of its nearly 30 years. For a Nashville coffee list, Fido is the essential "coffeehouse that grew into a real restaurant" entry — a former pet shop turned Hillsboro Village institution, still serving Bongo Java's organic coffee alongside a genuinely considered all-day menu.
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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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