The Terminal Cafe Announces Its Last Flight

It was announced on Instagram, as so much small-business news is these days: Coffee shop The Terminal Cafe in East Nashville will close this Sunday, Dec. 30.

Using airport codes as names of sandwiches, clocks with different time zones on the wall, and other travel elements that were a nod to a theme, but not over-the-top, Terminal Cafe is a small, welcoming outpost on Porter Road. While it has a loyal following, the tiny size was part of the problem, Whitney Davis reflects: "We couldn't do the volume we needed to do. Even if we were slammed on weekends, we had 16 seats, which is the most we could (legally) have with one bathroom." 

The team loved having people come in and hang out coffeehouse-style, but that made it hard to turn tables, and turn a profit, in a small space.

With her husband, Khalil Davis, in the kitchen, The Terminal Cafe served corned beef and hash, breakfast bowls, sandwiches, salads, and coffees and teas for the last two-and-a-half years.

"In Nashville there is this disproportionate obsession with new. We get it. We like to try new things, too. But there's so much focus on what's new, the existing places just can't compete," Whitney says. "Cafes are opening every day. We pay more than minimum wage, and the idea was for Khalil to be able to make a living. That's not possible. We're barely breaking even. We could do this for another couple of years, but that's very stressful."

On social media they posted: "We’re happy to answer any of your questions but we ultimately just can’t make a living with the overwhelming number of places on every corner and cost of paying a living wage while providing a quality product. We could have cut the quality of our products and people to get by but if you know us at all you know that’s just not us."

Whitney says they told staff much earlier than Sunday's public announcement, but waited until this week to post that so vendors would keep bringing them ingredients so they could stay open until year-end.

Khalil, a coffeehouse veteran, is doing some soul-searching to decide what's next. He may start offering personal training — he's at the gym at 5 a.m. before coming to open the breakfast-and-lunch cafe — or personal meal-prep services, Whitney says.

Whitney says she hopes there will be some changes in the Nashville permit process, perhaps a system where permits in certain categories are transferred from one business to another, rather than new permits being issued, to try to control some of the growth.

Two years remain on the Porter Road lease; the Davises look forward to finding the right interested party for the space.