Three New Superettes Come to Nashville

There are occasional weekdays when Rachel Clark is rushing around, and she could use some help. She and her husband Andrew, a design professional, manage a household of kids’ soccer games, dogs that need exercise, two careers with after-work demands and various community and volunteer commitments. Occasionally, Clark imagined that help as the ability to quickly grab some tinned fish and fancy olive oil off the shelf in a store in her neighborhood so she could pull together a quick dinner that wasn’t takeout, but didn’t require navigating a crowded supermarket. And, she imagined, it would all happen so it looked seamless, like she had her act together.

Last month, the couple opened Kinda Collected in East Nashville to offer the kind of experience Clark dreamed of. The name is a play on the phrase “calm, cool and collected,” and the small shop has shelves filled with housewares, olive oil, chocolate-covered dates and shelf-stable condiments. A small cooler houses beverages and perishable grab-and-go meals from Secret Bodega. There are also books and magazines and Patooties (cute needle-felted objects with shapely butts crafted by Tabitha Ong Tune) and a membership program for curated monthly market packs with a cross section of the shop’s goods. 

Kinda Collected is one of three new upscale markets that have opened in Nashville. This trio joins a collection of other purveyors and superettes (see our list below) stocking selections of specialty groceries and fresh-made baked goods, pastas, cured meats and other staples. These spaces may be small in square footage (perhaps just a few shelves in a restaurant entranceway or several aisles in a storefront), but they give Nashvillians big choices for grocery shopping.

Bodega-style retail offerings thrived during the pandemic lockdown, when many restaurants temporarily converted to markets to serve customers who had difficulty finding goods due to supply-chain issues. Many shoppers want to buy locally and support mom-and-pops, and they’re willing to pay a bit more for specialty items. They also like the little extras they don’t find at a supermarket. While it might seem counterintuitive to think folks will spend $8 for crackers while worrying about a recession, research shows people do tend to buy little treats when big ones are out of reach. And those crackers could elevate last night’s leftovers.

“The whole concept for iggy’s started with the market,” explains Ryan Poli of the Wedgewood-Houston restaurant he and his brother Matthew opened in 2023. Poli sold pasta kits during the pandemic after he was frustrated when his to-go pasta orders arrived as glutenous globs after long Grubhub rides. Their business plan evolved to include a restaurant, with a menu heavy on those housemade pastas and sauces. The restaurant’s success — it’s often challenging to nab a reservation — is now allowing the brothers to open that market portion. They’ll sell things they make and ingredients they love — rigatoni, spaghetti and other pasta, Bolognese and other sauces, their beloved garlic bread and hard-to-find cheese from Murray’s Cheese. Iggy’s restaurant is open only for dinner right now (weekend brunch may be in the future), but the market opens at noon for dinner prep. Market items will come with directions on how to prepare at home.

“When I was growing up, there was a butcher shop and a produce store,” Poli says. “Jewel-Osco [the large Chicago supermarket] was more of the pharmacy. My mom went to four or five different places to get things.”

While that might not sound effective when it comes to the one-stop-shopping mindset, Poli thinks these markets help build community, particularly in a dense neighborhood like Wedgewood-Houston. People get to know each other when they pop up at markets with frequency and offer each other tips (and maybe even dinner invites) for topping off a weeknight meal.

Kinda Collected is looking at ways to further build community, including hosting a craft night and other events. The shop is located just below the new Switchyards co-working space. The space does not allow members to eat full meals at their desks, so Clark is considering adding a few seats for co-workers to have lunch. Coincidentally, another Switchyards location will soon open near The Bottega at Frankies (opening this month), so there’s another audience that will appreciate to-go meals — particularly in the summer when outdoor seating will be plentiful.

John Burns Paterson, owner-operator of The Bottega at Frankies, wants locals to feel comfortable picking up the phone (yes, in an age when many restaurants don’t even publish their phone numbers) and say, “I’m having 15 people over for dinner tonight — what can you do to help me look good?”

Many of the Nashville superettes are Italian markets. In addition to iggy’s and The Bottega at Frankies, there’s Coco’s Fresh Italian Market and Little Hats, and in Inglewood, Mr. Aaron’s Goods was inspired by a now-shuttered and still-missed Germantown market.

“The seed that planted Mr. Aaron’s Goods was visiting Tom Lazzaro at Lazzaroli,” says owner Aaron Distler, who recently expanded his business to selling some products on shelves inside Chinese restaurant TKO in Inglewood. “I loved his shop. I loved that you could go buy the flours he used to make the pasta he sold. I loved that he took the time to talk to me about pasta making, giving me recipes and recommendations. So we definitely try and do that too. Hopefully, we can be the little neighborhood market that connects with folks and inspires them like he inspired me.” 

Poli thinks there’s a good reason Italian markets are so popular: “Boiling pasta might be one of the first things you learn cooking. I learned to make pasta and mix it with garlic and olive oil, and I was able to feed myself after school. Everybody can cook pasta. No one is going home and making beef Wellington on the fly.”

With the opening of the hotly anticipated The Bottega at Frankies, Nashville’s early-2024 superette trifecta is complete. Burns Paterson and chefs Frank Castronovo and Frank Falcinelli brought The Pizzeria at Frankies slice shop and Frankies 925 Spuntino restaurant to town last year, to the delight of folks who knew the duo’s pizza and pasta from Brooklyn. The Bottega, across the street from the restaurants, will offer their fresh and dried pasta, Frankies 457 brand olive oil and olives, coffee, house-made soup and other to-go items that you’re not going to find in Kroger or Whole Foods, Falcinelli says. 

Located in the Laurel & Pine development in East Nashville, the Frankies businesses are winning over Nashville neighbors as they do in Brooklyn. Burns Paterson says the team saw many apartment-dwellers make their way over for pizza while wearing swimsuits and flip-flops back in the summer, and they’re hoping the market continues to serve the neighborhood in a similar way.

Burns Paterson grew up in Montgomery, Ala., and remembers going to the Maxwell Air Force Base Commissary with his grandmother. He hopes locals will think of The Bottega at Frankies as an extension of their pantries, as his grandmother did of that commissary, with staples available seven days a week. But, he says, there will be at least one item you can nab at Frankies in Nashville that you wouldn’t find at a Brooklyn bottega: country ham.