Brown Bag began in 2009 as a simple catering business started by Peter Brown. A manager at Qdoba, Brown noticed a gap in the catering market — No one was serving simple, healthy meals at a reasonable price. If you wanted an affordable catered meal, you were often left with pre-made sandwiches and bags of chips. Peter decided that he was going to create a catering menu that was simple but delicious and incredibly well done.
Peter started in his home kitchen, eventually moved to his detached garage, and in 2011, made the transition to Brown Bag’s first location off of Hardin Valley Road in Knoxville, TN. After several months, Peter decided to take advantage of the space and opened up the restaurant, which would dish out catering orders throughout the day and serve food to customers who came in daily for lunch. The business grew organically, grounded in great relationships, a lot of hustle and delivery of exceptional customer service, some of the hallmarks of Brown Bag as a company.
In 2016, Brown Bag expanded into the Nashville market with its first store located in Cool Springs. Business grew so quickly that in 2017, Brown Bag opened a commercial kitchen to handle catering for the entire Nashville area. In May 2018, Brown Bag opened it’s first restaurant outside of Tennessee in Charlotte, NC.
What has been the most valuable aspect of your Chamber membership?
For us, getting the opportunity to go out to chamber events and meet directly with our customers and potential customers has been a great advantage of joining the Chamber. Nashville is a growing city with new businesses constantly popping up in the area. The Chamber allows us to network and connect with other leaders in our community and introduce Brown Bag as an event/corporate lunch and dinner solution!
Can you share a significant lesson you have learned as a business leader?
The most important lesson I have learned as a business leader here in Middle Tennessee is that your team and employees are incredibly crucial to a company’s success. When everyone within our kitchen and workspace are all bought in, and moving in the same direction and same goal of serving our customers to the best of our ability, we can see a direct positive correlation to our success on paper.
How do you manage and maintain a positive company culture?
I believe that the attitude within a company starts at the top. My partners and I strive to show up every single day to serve our staff first. When the kitchen, delivery, and front of house staff are taken care of and feel valued, they then have the ability to go out within our community and serve our customers with the same positive attitudes that they are surrounded with at Brown Bag!
Are there new markets or demographics you are targeting?
For sure! We already deliver a lot of catered meals to meetings and events in the downtown Nashville area, but we recognize that there are still many offices and venues in the market that could use our healthy and affordable meals for their workplace or recreational events! That is one reason why we love the Chamber so much, because it affords us the opportunity to reach these organizations that have yet to hear about us.
What is unique about your business that makes you stand out?
Our range and relentless pursuit of serving customers a variety of healthy and affordable meals to wherever and whenever we can reach them sets us apart from most catering options in the area. Our menu has several options from our classic menu (grilled chicken, spinach salad with a poppyseed vinaigrette, homemade mashed potatoes, rolls, and brownies) to our fajita menu, and many others to choose from. We deliver anywhere from Dickson to Cookeville, Clarksville to Manchester, and of course all of the local hospitals, churches, and schools right here in Nashville.
We also offer Brown Bag Blessings, which is intended to bless an individual or family who is sick, hurting, or in a difficult season of like. Within 24 hours notice and pending availability by location, Brown Bag will have a meal for 6 people or less ready for pickup at no cost. There’s no catch. We want to bring life and encouragement to our community.
How do you stay involved in the community?
At Brown Bag, we value work life balance, and encourage all of our employees to do what they are passionate about outside of work. For many, including myself, this means being a part of different clubs, organizations, and community groups. Being involved in our community has been the biggest contributor to our organic growth, and has been important in shaping our service based culture at Brown Bag.
What differentiates your business from your competition?
We are a small company that makes a big impact. Like many have noticed, there is a lot of outside investment coming into Middle Tennessee and that includes a lot of larger food service businesses. We go above and beyond in our service to compete against some bigger name companies, and understand the importance of customer retention. Our operators value personally delivering meals to our customers daily, interacting in our market, and taking customer feedback to heart. There are many companies that see Nashville for dollar signs, where we see this city as a place that could use our healthy and affordable service.