Local coffee company Barista Parlor is set to close three of its brick-and-mortar locations.
The last day of operations at the coffee shop’s Hillsboro Village, Sylvan Supply and Germantown locations is set for Sunday. Barista Parlor will retain its outposts at the W Hotel, the Nashville International Airport and in East Nashville, owner Andy Mumma confirms to the Scene.
The remaining brick-and-mortar location at 519 Gallatin Ave. will close temporarily and is set to undergo a “refresh,” says Mumma. That will include paring down the drink menu, eliminating matcha and other specialty drinks and focusing on manual brew methods and locally roasted coffee, he says. The business’s coffee-roasting equipment will also be relocated to the East location, with Mumma anticipating a reopening in roughly a month’s time.
Mumma says the company’s income was simply not enough to offset a combination of high rents, insurance costs, taxes, higher coffee costs and labor costs. In Germantown the rent more than doubled, he tells the Scene.
“We have a $9 average ticket,” he says. “It doesn't work any longer to be able to pay these rents and taxes and how much this stuff costs with these small margins.”
“It just hasn’t been fun for me for years," he adds. "I want to make it fun again, I want to make it exciting for me, for the guests. I think the best way to do this is to just concentrate, bring it all back and just concentrate on making [the East Nashville location] awesome again.”
Barista Parlor has experienced labor disputes in the past, once in 2022 when a former employee of The Gulch location was allegedly fired after attempting to organize workers to petition for higher wages. In 2023, 24 employees quit or were fired at the Germantown and Marathon Village locations after a general manager resigned, citing a “belittling” work environment. Mumma estimates 15 employees will be let go because of the upcoming closings.
The East location, which opened in 2012, was Barista Parlor’s first. It added a Gulch location and a Germantown location in 2014. A Marathon Village location opened in 2018 and later closed in 2023. The W Nashville Hotel location came about in 2020. Two locations closed in 2025, one near Geodis Park on Benton Avenue and one in Louisville, Ky. Plans for a location at the Paseo South Gulch development to replace the original Gulch Golden Sound location, as well as a roasting and production hub in Wedgewood-Houston, never came to fruition.
“I don't think high cost of goods, high insurance, high rent, high taxes, high labor is specific to BP,” Mumma says. “This is something that I think a lot of bars and restaurants are having to overcome. What we got, in its current form, is no longer sustainable. It was when taxes were affordable and rents were half what they are now and all that. But it's just no longer possible."
