Twenty years ago, there was scarcely a coffeehouse to be found in Nashville. Now, you've not only got coffeehouses, you've got roasters and other providers as well. (And many of them tie their wares to humanitarian aims: not just pioneering
Bongo Java, but
Humphreys Street Coffee Co.and its MIMIC mentoring program,
Our Mission Coffee, Murfreesboro's
Webb's Refreshmentsand its
Just Love Coffees, etc.) It's harder for a new coffee shop to get noticed.
And harder still for The Jam Coffee House, which has everything but a biblical plague going against it as a location. Situated in a nondescript strip mall right off one of the city's busiest intersections, 12th Avenue South and Wedgewood, it's invisible from one direction and unreachable from the other in heavy traffic. It has little signage to speak of, and its turn-off comes almost immediately once you've passed the shop on the corner selling discount smokes and Hunt Brothers Pizza.
But the place rewards the extra effort that patrons are already making. In fact, it's a measure of how cozy this family-run coffee and tea shop is that you quickly forget the world outside its barred windows — a feature perhaps no other Nashville coffee house can claim.
