Nashville has opened enough coffee shops in the last decade that “unique” needs to mean something specific: a concept that cannot be replicated by changing the wall colors and upgrading the espresso machine. By that standard, the city has produced a handful of genuinely unusual operations.
Now and Then is the most extreme example. It’s a 12-seat Hi-Fi listening bar that operates by rules that would sink most coffee shops: no wifi, no laptops or tablets, no to-go orders, no parties larger than four. Table service only. The menu runs through high-scoring experimental coffees from Scandinavian-style roasters. Owners Demi Chaco and Davy Ball have each spent more than a decade in specialty coffee and compete seriously. Sprudge named Now and Then a Finalist for Best New Cafe. The stated purpose is to slow down enough to learn something about what you’re drinking, whether or not you planned to. If you’re used to grabbing a cup on the way to somewhere else, this shop is explicitly built to prevent that. For anyone tired of treating coffee as a utility rather than an experience, it’s the one coffee shop in Nashville with no equivalent.
The board game cafe
Game Point at the East Nashville location of Bongo Java offers 500 to 700 board games with your coffee, depending on the source. Nashville Guru lists it as Nashville’s first board game cafe. The games are free to play with a coffee purchase. The space runs game coaches who can explain rules and help groups find games that fit their size and experience. Bongo Java opened in 1993 and is the oldest continuous coffee presence in Nashville, which means Game Point layers something genuinely new onto the city’s oldest coffee institution.
The flower shop inside the coffee shop
Neighborlily at 606 Monroe Street in Germantown is a flower, coffee, and tea shop. The concept is not coffee in a flower shop or flowers in a coffee shop but both programs operating with equal seriousness. The espresso program runs alongside a curated selection of seasonal fare and fresh bouquets. The Dulce de Leche latte and the Oaxacan Mocha (with cayenne) are signature items. You can leave with flowers and a cortado, which is not something Nashville offers in many other places.
The record shop experience
Drug Store Coffee inside the Noelle Hotel operates a custom vinyl audio system built by Hazelwood Labs that plays curated records throughout the day. The coffee is Sump, which is a serious specialty roaster. The space is gallery-like. The sound system is the design element, not just background music. It makes Drug Store Coffee feel more like a listening room that serves coffee than a coffee shop that plays music, which is a real distinction in a city with as much music infrastructure as Nashville.
The crossroads of categories
Americano Lounge in Wedgewood-Houston runs craft coffee and craft cocktails simultaneously from 8am to midnight on weekend nights. The owner Cody Pellerin is a former touring musician who built the space by hand. Chess tables. Velvet booths. Live jazz on Thursdays. At any given hour you might be sitting next to someone on a first date ordering champagne and someone else finishing a freelance project ordering a flat white. The combination of categories that Nashville typically separates, coffee shop by day, bar by night, is fused here into a single experience.
Crossroads Cafe offers the option to watch adoptable cats through a glass window or book a 30-minute reservation to visit cats in the jungle-themed playroom alongside the standard espresso menu. It’s an adoption cafe model common in East Asian cities that landed in Nashville and found its audience.
The unique coffee shop question in Nashville used to have one answer. Now it has at least five, which means the city’s coffee scene has matured past the point where a single unusual concept defines the whole. Now and Then is the most ambitious attempt at something genuinely unreplicable. Game Point is the most approachable. Drug Store Coffee is the most aesthetically considered. All three are worth visiting specifically because of what makes them different.
Sources
- Sprudge, “Sprudge Maps Spotlight: Now and Then in Nashville, TN”
- Nashville Guru, “Best Coffee Shops in Nashville”
- NASHtoday/6AM City, “Your Guide to Nashville’s Coffee Shops” (January 2026)
- modernluxury.com, “Nashville’s Best Coffee Shops to Elevate Your Morning Routine” (November 2025)
- The Infatuation, “The 17 Best Coffee Shops in Nashville” (May 2025)
- sixthcitymarketing.com, “20 of the Best Cafes, Bakeries, and Coffee Shops in Nashville” (February 2025)
- nashvilleguru.com, “Best Coffee Shops in Nashville”