Bongo Roasting Co.

Bongo opened a time long before Nashville was cool and cold brew was hot.

A homemade sign hung between two pillars on the front porch of the 80-year-old house turned café attracted a line of folks eager to experience the coffeehouse atmosphere that was big in other cities.

A few months later the Bongo crew got around to cutting down the "Sunday 4pm" part of the sign.  The remaining part lasted about three years before the café repurposed an old gas station pole sign into a “real sign.”

Bongo has been around so long we are only half way to being as important to the Nashville coffee lore as the slogan: good to the last drop which was also created here.

ABOUT THE FOUNDER

Bongo Java was started by a former journalist.  Thus, you can be darn assured that most of this history is true.  And since he’s no longer under the careful eye of an editor, you can be further assured that this history will be longer than need be!

Bob Bernstein moved from hometown Skokie, IL to Nashville in 1988 when he got a job as a reporter with Nashville Business Journal.  At the time, he thought he’d spend a year or two in the country music capital of the world gaining experience and then move on to a bigger and better city that had more stuff – or at least more than one sushi place, a single Indian restaurant and (if allowed to dream big) a place to see arthouse movies.

A year or so later, Bob decided he had it backwards. He liked Nashville and wasn’t so keen on his career choice.  Sure, the city lacked stuff.  Yet, it was an easy place to be (a term he coined for the city and later stole from himself to be a Bongo slogan).

Another thing it lacked was a coffeehouse – places Bob did lots of writing, some studying and a bit of coffee drinking at during high school and college.

As he got bored of reporting on the silliness of the state legislature and tired of the pressure of deadlines, Bob started thinking about the good old days when he’d hang out at coffeehouses writing moody stuff in his journals and making poor attempts at his Great American Novel.  

Nashville, a place full of songwriters, musicians and even a few employed people, could use a coffeehouse, Bob thought. And furthermore, he convinced himself that he could open such a place.  After all, he had worked in fast food joints and restaurants since he was 14 doing everything from flipping burgers to poorly waiting tables at a San Francisco seafood house.  He had done everything but manage or own.  And how hard could that be? he thought.

Bob quit journalism a few weeks before his 30th birthday – responding to a self-imposed deadline – with a very sketchy idea of opening a coffeehouse.  After a couple of months using up whatever savings a journalist could possibly have, he moved to a friend’s couch where he quickly wore out his welcome.

Facing a new deadline – the threat of having to get a job -- he got more serious about the project.  He took all the notes that were running through his head, taught himself how to use Excel and created what he thought was a business plan.  Bankers, however, thought of it more as a comic book since 1) it was filled with photocopies of Far Side and other cartoons about coffee;  2) they thought it was funny that someone would want to compete selling “coffee and donuts” against Krispy Kreme – their idea of a coffeehouse; and 3) they pointed out that a journalism master's degree (even from such a prestigious place as Northwestern U. wasn't much of a credential to run a cafe.

BONGO JAVA

The project got funded when Bob started publicly admitting that he wanted to open a coffeehouse.  While some still did laugh (including friends who didn't want to say they thought he’d lost his mind and was going to lose all his money), he found others who actually wanted to invest.  Investors came from different parts of his life.  A fellow former journalist led him to someone who wanted to invest in a coffeehouse.  And he in turn led to a few more investors.  Two guys who watched Chicago Bears football with Bob at a local sports bar kicked in.  And a couple of folks who did volunteer work with him pitched in too.  To this day, Bob is thankful to all of them that they saw his business plan with comics not as a joke but as a reflection of his personality that would create a quirky, Nashville institution.

Over the years, Bongo catered to different group. 

At first, Bongo Java quickly became a popular hangout for the hip part of Nashville – which at that time was a 30 and older crowd of musicians, progressives and others like bob who had reluctantly moved to Nashville.

A few years later, high school students discovered Bongo and that its big front porch was a safe and fun place to hang out.

Bongo became more of the collegiate hang it is now when Belmont University expanded across the street.

Throughout it all, Bongo has attracted many neighborhood folks who walk, run and push strollers up and down popular Belmont Blvd. One early regular praised the comfortable hand as "the best place to have breakfast and lunch in on conversation."

LOYAL CUSTOMERS AND CRAZY STORIES

Over the years we’ve done things here our way and had a whole lot of loyal customers and crazy stories.  Here’s a few

• Old time regulars will remember the likely only Dim Sum cart at any coffeehouse anywhere. We had a creative chef and a crazy founder so naturally Bob (founder) put Mindy’s (chef) daily inspirations on a cart and had actress turned waitress Mary push it through an already over-crowded dining room. And when it got too busy for the kitchen to keep up, crazy Bob filled the cart with muffins, oranges and Pop Tarts. And the crazy thing was, customers bought everything (especially the brown sugar cinnamon Pop Tarts).
• One couple met on the front porch and got married in the dining room. Because it was Bongo (and the couple had no money), the ceremony was held just after the Sunday brunch rush. (There is a rumor that their child was conceived in the back bathroom, but that was before we installed cameras there so there isn’t any proof).
• We’ve been threatened with lawsuits by the Elvis Presley Estate, Mother Teresa herself, some giant coffee company and a California produce company. The King folks were mad about an art show we had that featured painting with Elvis doing all sorts of things like washing the dishes. Mother Teresa laughed about a cinnamon bun that looked like her but didn’t like us calling it the Mother Teresa Miracle Bun or the Immaculate Confection. We settled with her attorney (who we debated on Fox TV) by calling it the NunBun. The coffee company didn’t like the name of one of our blends: Charbucks (we still sell Charbucks) And a very long-term employee channeled the logo of the produce farm we bought from and drew the child with the French beret in all sorts of scenarios complete with deep philosophical pronouncements. We thought it only right to share a couple images with the company. Seems the owner wasn’t amused. Turns out the boy in the drawings was the farm owner's grand daughter.