Nashville

Check Out Bongo World

This cool company in 1993 with a single cafe called Bongo Java and have since added other coffee and food operations. We now unofficially call our entire operation Bongo World. 

Bongo World consists of four cafes and a wholesale coffee roasting company. Each store has its own personality, look and menu. Overall, the company seeks to serve high-quality coffee and food in unique, comfortable atmospheres. We also have a commitment to sustainability. Thus, our coffee is 100% organic, bought directly from small-farmer cooperatives under the terms of Fair Trade.

They are best known as a coffee company even though their busiest operation (Fido) is really a restaurant. 

They have received a ridiculous amount of press and awards since opening including:

Founding

Bongo was started by Bob Bernstein, a recovering political organizer and journalist. He moved to Nashville from his native Chicago in 1988 after graduating from Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism to be a business and political reporter. Bob figured he'd be in Nashville for a year or two and then continue his journalism career in a bigger city. 

Like all good plans, this one got quickly interrupted. Bob soon realized that he didn't want to do all the hard work it would take to get his dream job as a columnist for the Chicago Tribune (ala Mike Royko). He also realized that his entrepreneurial desires outweighed his news junkie status.

Bob quit his job days before turning 30 with the goal of opening a coffeehouse. At the time, Nashville didn't have a true coffeehouse. Bob had hung out in coffeehouses throughout high school, college and graduate school. He didn't really like coffee but he liked the cafe atmosphere. He had also worked in restaurants most of his life: fast food, waiting tables, bartending and valet parking. 

Bongo Java opened about 15 months after Bob quit his job at the end of 1991. Bob raised money from private investors after banks said they wouldn't fund a place that only sold "coffee and donuts." Truly, Nashville banks hadn't noticed the caffeine craze that had already started on the West Coast.

Bongo World expanded in 1996 with the opening of Fido and Bongo Java Roasting Co. The two started in the same Hillsboro Village building before physically separating in 2000. The two operations were growing and the 3,500 sq. ft. space was no longer large enough. BJRC then moved to East Nashville. The new space also housed a much smaller cafe with a scaled back cafe dubbed East Cafe.

The next expansion happened a few years later with the opening of Grins Vegetarian Cafe. This veggie and Certified Kosher cafe operates on the campus of Vanderbilt University.