Lost and Found — a Food Truck Park With a Permanent Twist

It’s been about four years since Steve Mabee, Nathan Weinberg, Davey Rowe-Mabee and Kelly Boutwell (best known for Retrograde Coffee and Ugly Mugs Coffee & Tea) and Jamie White (best known for Pearl Diver and Tiger Bar) acquired a property at Gallatin and McGavock pikes. Since then they’ve done a lot of “reimagining” regarding what the space could be, Boutwell says.

Inspired by their own collective love of travel and the serendipitous nature of getting lost and finding new favorites while out on the road, the group of food service professionals finally opened Lost and Found last week.  

The result is a little hard to describe, but something they hope will be easy to love. It’s an outdoor community gathering space: part food truck park, part wine shop, part retail area, part food court, part neighborhood hang. When completed, Lost and Found will feature two non-food retail shops, a wine bar, rotating food trucks, a craft cocktail bar and more, plus covered patio seating, a rooftop deck and room for pop-up markets. The roster is filled with beloved Nashville names, including Pizza Lolo, the popular pop-up pizza concept opening its first brick-and-mortar location. There’s also Guyanese restaurant The Pepper Pott, as well as Katrin Taqueria and Sarabha’s Creamery, the Hillsboro Village Indian ice cream stop opening its second location. A Retrograde Coffee trailer will open early for coffee and breakfast. (Not all of these establishments are opening immediately.)

Best Friends will offer vintage consignment clothing. New Lost and Found-only businesses include Boutwell’s tiny wine bar Birdie’s and White’s outdoor bar Fortunate Sun. Birdie’s focus is organic, biodynamic and other wines made with minimal-intervention techniques. Fortunate Sun draws inspiration from White’s travels.

Earlier this year, the Lost and Found team posted on social media that they were looking for an ice cream vendor to join them. According to Sarabha’s Creamery owner Gursharan Singh, several current customers came into the shop on 21st Avenue South, post in hand, suggesting Sarabha’s go east.

“We liked all the different foods from different regions that they are going to have, and we thought it would be a good fit for us,” Singh says.

The spot will also feature a rotating group of food trucks, including Chivanada empanadas. Co-owner Daniel Yarzagaray signed a longer lease than some of the other trucks planning to kick things off at Lost and Found. He says he’s worked with White for years at Pearl Diver and has been involved in a number of food truck parks, so he knows what works and what doesn’t.

“Jamie approached me about this project, and it was just an immediate yes, because this is perfect for us,” Yarzagaray says. “It is everything that we love to do. It doesn’t veer away from our strengths, which are that we are really good at food trucking, and we love making our empanadas and starting them hot and fresh. We’re not taking them in a hot box somewhere. It’s just a really unique concept, backed by a lot of people that I really believe in.”

While food trucks are not new — or even in their first resurgence — they’re popular in Nashville and its environs, and they’re popping up all over. Running a brick-and-mortar restaurant is expensive, as evidenced by the recent closures of Pelican & Pig, Varallo’s and other independent spots. Being permanently situated in a food truck or a micro location — such as Lost and Found or fellow East Nashville hub The Wash — gives chefs options they may not otherwise have.

“People are really responsive to these hustling business owners,” says Laurie Holloway, co-owner of The PickUp Food Truck Park, which opened on Brick Church Pike in the fall. 

The PickUp averages four to five trucks in its lot Thursdays through Sundays. Locals appreciate it as a place where parking doesn’t cost more than their meal. With umbrellas for shade and firepits in the winter, The PickUp is turning out to be a year-round destination, to the surprise of its owners. (Holloway’s business partners, Darlene Jacobs-Anderson and Brittany Miles, own Peace Love and Paws next door.) The food truck park attracts locals, particularly folks living in condos in the area — Holloway says another 2,400 are planned over the next 18 months — as well as visitors staying at nearby Airbnbs.

Lindsey Hartfield and her husband run The Truck Stop in Donelson, a food truck park located in an empty lot that once housed a car lot — the lot where Hartfield bought her first car, as it happens. That illustrates what Hartfield and others feel is so essential about food truck parks: They are part of the community and bring people together as a gathering place.

Many members of the Lost and Found team live in Inglewood, and that was one of the reasons they wanted to bring their idea to the neighborhood. They’re excited by some of the new projects in the area, including the mini restaurant row that is now Riverside Village. The two spots are less than a mile from each other, and Boutwell hopes people will wander from one to the other, moving from one gathering place to the next. There’s a small parking lot, and owners hope people will consider walking, biking or taking WeGo too.

Lost and Found is intended to be family-friendly, but not kid-centric, Weinberg says. There’s a big white wall for showing movies after dark, and a grassy area with supplied blankets — reminiscent of the original I Dream of Weenie’s days on Woodland Street — where folks can sit and picnic. There are also plenty of picnic tables and umbrellas.

Boutwell adds: “We wanted to create a place that we would want to hang out at and really offer opportunities for other businesses to get started and create this sort of community hub.”