Who wants an afternoon pick-me-up? We have just the cure. Today through Friday you can come in anytime after 12pm and get a medium latte or mocha, pair it with a piece of bourbon chocolate pecan pie or a cupcake (as long as they last) from the amazing Sugar Bar for only $5. Currently we have vanilla with chocolate ganache icing and pina colada cupcakes both of which are absolutely brilliant. See you this afternoon!
- Jarod, Courtney & Liam "The Ugly Mugs"
We're Grand Opening this Saturday, August 16. We'll be open our regular hours and have giveaways, live music, a few free samples of some unbelievable deserts from The Sugar Bar and a chance to win free coffee for a year! Yes, seriously. We'll be taking the drawing entries all day and then will announce the winner on our blog a few days later. The music begins at 5pm and will feature chart topping songwriters, acclaimed indie artists and music from prime time television. Check out the lineup for details. And get here early to enjoy the music from the comfy green couch. Thank you so much for your continued support and we look forward to seeing you Saturday!
-Jarod, Courtney & Liam
We're Open! Come in and see us from 6am-9pm Monday through Saturday, and 7am-3pm Sunday. For all of you who have already come in, encouraged and supported us and sent in your friends, we thank you sincerely. Stay tuned for information on a grand opening event coming soon that will include giveaways and live music. Have a great Sunday!
Picture this....you got up and had to run errands all morning. It's ten o'clock and you realized you haven't had your coffee for the day, so maybe you're not thinking happy thoughts. It's August in Nashville and you can see steam coming off the streets. Try this, an iced Vietnamese style coffee? I think this is one of a few lost gems in our coffee culture but is readily available in a number of authentic Vietnamese restaurants around Nashville. It consists of dark roasted coffee preferably with chicory (the most well known is probably Cafe Du Monde) and sweetened condensed milk. As a warning to black coffee drinkers, this drink is pretty sweet but in a good way; it is also pretty reviving as an afternoon pick-me-up. Now you can go about the rest of your day thinking happy thoughts! Enjoy.
We love art! We love the creative process that artists go through and we love getting to know creative people. If you are an artist and would like to showcase your work in Ugly Mugs email us. We would like to talk to you. Thank you in advance for being willing to help decorate our walls. In return, we will blog about every artist we feature and will not ask for a commission on any art sold.
Thank you Rosa Ruthsatz for this beautiful painting of the Nashville skyline. We dig the impressionist influence! Everyone will be able to see it in the coffeehouse or buy it here.
This will be the first of what we hope is many attempts at involving our friends, family and customers to make Ugly Mugs a great coffeehouse. We are beginning to build a music library for the house music and we want your input. Leave us a comment below and let us know one (or more if you'd like) MUST HAVE albums to play at the coffeehouse. We're looking for all kinds of artists, all genres. So thumb through those iPods and let's see what you've got! Have fun and thank you for being part of our dream!
So where did Ugly Mugs come from? Friends of ours actually. It came about early on in our planning, very early, about the time we were committing to the dream some 18 months ago. Some friends came to us and thought it might be a good idea to name our coffeehouse "Ugly Mugs" and we could serve coffee in all different mugs. We loved the idea. We began thinking about cleaning the thrift shops and flea markets out of random mugs; we also loved the idea of people traveling and bringing us a mug back from where they came from. So we did some research and realized that there are a handful of coffeehouses in the country with some variation of the name. There is also a fairly well known roasting company out of Memphis with a similar name. None of us are related as far as we can tell. Of course, knowing there were businesses out there with similar names got us thinking about other ideas. But none of them had the same impact as Ugly Mugs. In addition to the endless marketing concepts that come from it, why not give the ugly mug a shot at stardom? Isn't that every coffee mug's dream, to be used in a real-life coffeehouse. That has to be the major leagues for a mug. And frankly, many don't get a shot right out of design stage. Every individual person that comes through our door will be unique, why shouldn't they drink from a mug that is equally unique. And finally, we don't know anyone who can open their mug cabinet at home and find 8 of the exact same mugs in there. There is that mug from the vacation you took and you realized you didn't have any other souvenirs with the spot's name on it, so you picked one up in the airport. There is the mug you saw at the antique mall and couldn't pass it up because it said "Maw, come git yer coffee." Well we're giving those mugs a shot at the big leagues. Are all our mugs going to be ugly? Some of them will be, others will just be. But they all have a place with us. We're always on the lookout for more. Have one you would like to donate? Bring it by (when we open) and we would love to add it to our collection. Keep an eye out for ugly mug contests too...
We’re Jarod, Courtney and Liam. We’re just a family. We’re not entrepreneurs, legacies and certainly not trust fund babies. We’re not trying to build an empire or a dynasty. We’re just trying to make our own way and be part of our community. We love community. In many ways we live for it. It was after we came to a neighborhood meeting in East Nashville that we decided to move here. We loved a place where people cared about what was going on in their community; cared about things that were going to make it better. Many neighborhoods are more concerned with how long your grass is or how well your new landscaping project makes everyone else’s house look. To each his own. But again, we’re about community. That’s what Ugly Mugs is about too. It is a place in the community for you to come read, write, sing, meet, blog, connect, talk, listen or do whatever it is you want to do in a coffeehouse. That’s why we’re here, that’s why we built this place. We are wide open, we don’t have a problem being honest with you. We don’t have an angle or a hidden agenda. Of course we didn’t open a business to fail. Like I said, we’re just trying to make our own way. Our vision is to look around and see people in the community connecting with others, sharing stories, and supporting each other. And with any luck doing that with a little time left over to hang out as a family. We hope you like our place. We hope you like all the local coffeehouses in Nashville. Thanks for visiting us.
